


The King Is Dead, Long Live The King

by TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Action, Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Anti-Hero, Blood and Gore, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Drama, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Porn With Plot, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Science Fiction, Superpowers, Thriller, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2019-10-24 16:44:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 53,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17707937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard/pseuds/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard
Summary: Heavy is the head that wears the crown.





	1. Blood Brothers by Oceans Ate Alaska

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Become the monster that they think you are.

The music in Jisung’s ears was cranked up so fucking loud.

 

 _I would anchor down_ , the vocals screamed into his skull, _and weather the storms._

 

The guitars chugged up and down a wildly beautiful chord progression. The kick of the drums thumped through his torso like a pulse. Shit. These new Beats were fucking sick! He could feel the bass bounce all the way through to his fucking teeth!

 

_You would stand and fight to protect us. This you had sworn._

 

Jisung was shocked that Seungmin, frugal as the bitch was, shelled out the cash for them. And as a fucking gift, no less! Jisung turned the volume up on his tunes as high as they would go as the song catapulted forward. Noise. Noise. Beautiful noise.

 

Then a brief moment of silence. Respite. _Taste the blood of your brothers._

 

The guitars came back in hard and dissonant and panicky, absolutely destroying the melody if there was much of one to begin with. The breakdown made Jisung want to fuck shit up, fucking mosh, fucking beat some ass, fucking _fuck_ , but he made himself keep walking calmly down the sidewalk.

 

 _Draw blood_.

 

The guitar riff absolutely crumbled and got even more twisted and strained.

 

God fucking dammit. He _loved_ this song. That’s why it pissed him off when a phone call came through, halting the song and ruining his mood. “Fucking shit,” he grumbled under his breath. He snatched off his headphones, unplugged them from his phone and held the device up to his ear in one swift motion. Into the phone, he shouted, “What the fuck?”

 

“Dude!” It was Seungmin. “The fuck? I said I’d be at your place in five. Why’d you fucking leave?”

 

“You take forever,” Jisung told him. Seungmin could be such a dick, always asking people to wait on him when he was always a million years late.

 

“Traffic was backed up,” Seungmin explained himself. “A fucking truck flipped over because of all this fucking ice.”

 

“That’s not my problem,” said Jisung.

 

“Did I say you fucking did it?” Then, in a less aggressive tone, Seungmin said, “You should wait for me.”

 

Jisung switched his phone from one ear to the other. “I said I’m going tonight so I’m going tonight.”

 

“And I said wait for me. Why didn’t you wait?”

 

“Because I’m fucking _pissed off_ , Seungmin,” Jisung replied. Just saying it out loud made it a little more true. He _was_ pissed. “Fuck!” As if in response to his rage, the wintry wind blew harder. The snow came down a little thicker but Jisung didn’t care. He couldn’t feel the cold. He _was_ the cold. “And you know I hate waiting when I’m fucking pissed.”

 

“I said I’d only be five minutes,” Seungmin groaned. There was the noise of a car door slamming, of an engine starting up. He must have just got back in his car after ringing Jisung’s doorbell to no avail. “How far did you get?”

 

Jisung glanced around. He hated coming to this side of town. He didn’t know it. The streets all had names instead of numbers and there were fucking curves in the road and hills and shit. Above the rooftops, he saw a mountain. Most of the street lamps along the road blinked on and off uselessly and he hadn’t seen a taxi in forever. “There’s a goddamn pancake diner up ahead.”

 

“Jisung! What the fuck! How did you get that far already?”

 

“You said you’d be five minutes but you fucked off for a whole hour,” Jisung snarled. “You can’t tell time, Seungmin, so I got a head start.”

 

“Stay where you are. I’ll pick you up.”

 

“And wait another fucking hour? I can walk faster than that shit car of yours can drive.”

 

“Jisung, you can’t go up there by yourself,” Seungmin warned him. “It’s not like you’re fucking sneaking into a club and starting another fight. This is real. This is dangerous.”

 

“Those fights at the club are real and dangerous.” Jisung flexed his hand and stared at the white scar of a knife wound diagonally across his palm.

 

Seungmin raised his voice, “These aren’t bastards at a nightclub though. What you’re walking into… those guys will have actual guns and they will definitely use them, Jisung. On _you_. They’re basically the fucking mob.”

 

“You say that like I haven’t been shot at before.”

 

“Wait for me, Jisung. Let’s go get him together. I can-”

 

“It hasn’t been that long since we met, Seungmin. I’m used to doing everything by myself. Just go home. Slow as you drive, I’ll be done and over at your shit place before you even get back.”

 

“Jisung.”

 

“Seungmin,” Jisung snapped back. Did Seungmin not realize how pissed off he was? Why wasn’t he angry? “They _took_ my Woojin. They snatched him off the fucking _street_ just to make a point and rile me up!”

 

“So what are you going to do? Kill them all?”

 

“You read my mind.”

 

There was a brief silence before Seungmin realized Jisung wasn’t joking. “Jisung! Fucking shit. I never should have showed you that video.”

 

Jisung thought about the video in question. Low-quality. Grainy. So desaturated of color it may as well have been in grayscale. It hadn’t been a long video, maybe ten seconds at most, but ten seconds was all Jisung needed to know that the bloody man strapped naked to a metal chair outside in the cold was his Woojin. _His_ Woojin. His fucking Woojin! “If you hadn’t have showed me that video,” Jisung said, his voice blizzard-cold, “if I had found out you knew where Woojin was being held but you didn’t tell me, I’d have killed you.”

 

Seungmin tried again. Slowly, quietly, “Please wait for me, Jisung. It’ll be easier if I’m there.”

 

“If you’re not there,” Jisung told him, “then I won’t have to hold back.” Just the idea of that made his anger taper off a little. Some wild, sick elation flooded him. He let out a giddy laugh. “I can let it _all_ out and, holy shit, I haven’t let it all out in so long.” Without waiting for a response or even saying goodbye, he hung up and shoved his phone in his pocket. The anger was back. White hot and impossible to control. God fucking dammit! Shit! He yelled, “If only I had fucking known earlier!” There was a garbage can close to where he was walking. He kicked it and knocked the thing over, sending garbage and shit all over the fresh snow. “Fuck!” When Woojin hadn’t come home Tuesday night, Jisung didn’t think it was strange. Being with Jisung exhausted him spiritually, Woojin always said, so sometimes he slept at the office where he worked just so he wouldn’t have to sleep in the bed they shared in their shit apartment. Then, Wednesday morning, Jisung got a call from Woojin’s boss, her voice full of concern because Woojin hadn’t showed up and she was worried because _Woojin never misses a day of work_. Jisung still hadn’t thought it strange. He just told her to fuck off, hung up on her and caught another five hours of sleep. Woojin liked to dick around from time to time. He’d randomly take time off and go anywhere, the mountains or the woods or the lake, just to put a little more distance between himself and Jisung after they had a big fight. And that was often. They always fucking fought and it wasn’t always the kind of fucking fighting that fucking right after could cure. Then Thursday crawled by and then Friday morning rolled around and Jisung got that weird email and it was all gibberish and shit and clicking on the link at the bottom made his malware blocker go haywire and gave him the blue screen of death so because he knew fuck all about computers, he showed his shitty laptop to Seungmin because the dude could build websites blindfolded using only his toes or whatever the fuck. Then Seungmin decrypted shit or whatever and found the website with the grainy video and made the poor decision to send Jisung the link all casually like ‘Hey, isn’t that the hydroelectric plant?’ and that’s how Jisung was like ‘Hey, isn’t that my missing boyfriend tied to a chair?’ and that’s how Jisung found himself walking to the outskirts of town with the intent to commit literal actual fucking murder.

 

Multiple times.

 

“You’re beautiful.”

 

Jisung was barely paying attention. Were they talking to him? He glanced around for the source of the voice.

 

“Yeah. You, babe. My little blue-haired Barbie.”

 

Jisung stopped walking. What a shit pet name. The snow was thick and crunchy under his shoes. He looked around. “Huh?” Really, he shouldn’t have been wearing his new kicks in the snow but, fucking shit, they were stylish as all hell and they had _just_ arrived in the mail that morning and he’d be damned if he didn’t show them the fuck off! “What the hell did you just say to me?”

 

There was a man leaning against the shelter of the bus stop he was walking by. Gray hoodie. Slightly different gray sweatpants. A shit dye job. A poor attempt at facial hair and eyes that were narrowed with bad intentions. He looked Jisung up and down, savoring the sight of him even though he was just in a fucking coat and skinny jeans. “You’re gorgeous, babe. Hot as hell. Shit!”

 

“Thanks but no thanks, you sack of shit.” Jisung started walking again.

 

“What that mouth do?”

 

Jisung turned and looked at him again.

 

The man smiled. “You’re so fucking pretty.”

 

“You can’t even see my face,” Jisung told him. There was no way he could. His mask covered his face from nose bridge to chin. His hair, blue like glaciers, covered the rest.

 

“You’re fine as fuck,” the man said. “I can tell just by your eyes, babydoll.”

 

The man wasn’t even fine! Goddamn. If Jisung was going to cheat on Woojin like Woojin cheated on him, it at least had to be with somebody fine. Somebody hotter than Woojin. Somebody with a fatter dick than Woojin. That would be tough to come by, though. Jisung rolled his eyes. “Fuck off.” He turned around and started walking up the sidewalk again. He had somewhere to be. Somewhere important. He put his headphones back on but didn’t even have the chance to plug them back in and press play on his tunes again when the man came up behind him and yanked his headphones off. Jisung whirled on him. Angry. “Fuck off,” he repeated. Nastier. Lower. He snatched his headphones out of the man’s grubby hands. “Don’t touch my fucking Beats.”

 

“No need to get mean, baby. I just wanna say something. You’re fine as hell.”

 

“You said what you wanted to say now _fuck off_. I’m busy.” He started down the sidewalk again. His heart, usually a cold and still block of black ice in his chest, thumped with heat and life. For once. It was cold as hell outside but he was starting to sweat. Starting to get nervous. Starting to get afraid. Not of what the man might do to him but of what he might do to the man.

 

The guy followed him up the sidewalk. “You think we’re done here, doll? You think I’ve had enough of you?”

 

Jisung gave him a glance over his shoulder. Even though he wasn’t fine, Jisung may have still considered giving him a shot if he dressed nice. But his steez? Complete shit. Nike hoodie? Adidas sweatpants? What the absolute fuck? You were loyal to one brand or the other. You never mixed them. Especially if the fucking grays didn’t match! Jisung scoffed, “I’ve had enough of _you_ , though.” The man’s shoes were at least two years old, telling by the design, and they were weathered and covered in creases like he didn’t take care of them. “And I don’t fuck dudes off the street who buy their shit secondhand.”

 

“You think this is a game?” The man asked. His pride had been clearly wounded and now his joking manner had been cast aside in favor of gruffness and anger. Not even the hot kind of anger. Just the shitty, bruised ego kind that was absolutely no fun to manipulate.

 

“I don’t have time to dick around with dudes not even on my level.” Jisung’s own shoes were brand spanking new. Two weeks ago, he’d sat in Seungmin’s bare bones apartment in the dark because Seungmin would rather pay his wi-fi bill than waste cash on light bulbs and Jisung refreshed the store page on the shoe website repeatedly from midnight to four minutes past until he caught the servers _just right_ and was finally able to get through and score the new collab in his size. He had tried to order Woojin a pair but after his first order was confirmed, the shoe was out of stock in every single fucking size. Even the tiny ones. Jisung gave the man a pitying look, “Fuck off.”

 

“I can get mean, too, babe.”

 

Jisung ignored him. Or he would have ignored him if the man hadn’t grabbed him by the elbow to stop him from walking too far ahead. “I will end you…” Jisung’s words died in his throat when he caught sight of the blade in the man’s hand.

 

The man smirked at Jisung’s surprise. “Oh? What happened to the attitude? Disappeared real quick, I see.”

 

“Oh, it’s still there,” Jisung said, his voice muffled by the face mask. “I was just surprised because you _gotta_ be overcompensating for something with a knife that big.”

 

“You got good jokes?”

 

Jisung wrenched his arm free of the man’s grasp. “You got good dick? Clearly not.”

 

“How about I take those shoes?” The man’s eyes settled on Jisung’s kicks. “Then I’ll let you go.”

 

“If you want my kicks you’re gonna have to actually _use_ that knife. Come on, then.” He faced the man head on, stood up a little straighter and even held his arms behind his back to show how little of a fuck he gave. “Alright, fucker, right through the chest. Get deep on in my heart. Like a dick, if you aim good one time, liquid will go everywhere.” The man didn’t move. Jisung rolled his eyes. “You scared? You all talk? If you had shoes worth stealing, I’d have _been_ stabbed your ass and left you in the snow.” He glanced down at the man’s yellowy shoes again before his eyes settled on the man’s bare wrist. “God, not even ice on your wrist?” He glanced up at the man’s neck. “Not even a fucking chain? You’re probably broke as hell yet you’re out here trying to tell somebody else what to fucking do. I’d kill you...” He leaned into the man’s face. “...but you’re not even worth the blood stains I’d get on my coat, bitch.” He spun away and continued down the sidewalk. Thinking the hassle was over, he let his mind drift back to Woojin. Just that fast, he felt relaxed. God, Woojin was so hot. He looked all innocent with his pretty face, I’m A Good Boy hair and dimples or whatever but the man was a real fucking freak. And his hands were so big compared to Jisung’s. A lot of things about him were big compared to Jisung.

 

The blue-haired boy put his headphones back on, plugged them back into his phone and pressed play.

 

The song flooded his ears instantly. Deafeningly loud. All thunder and rumble. The vocals broke into his thoughts.

 

_If you fell down, we would fall together._

 

His headphones were snatched off his head again. The raucous sound flooded into the cold air but then was swallowed up by the heaviness of the falling snow.

 

_Without you, home is fractured and broken._

 

The man was still on Jisung’s ass. He had been all forced smiles seconds before but now a predatory scowl was stretched across his face. _Finally_ the mask was gone and he was showing off the kind of fuck he really was. Good. Jisung didn’t like dealing with fakers.

 

The man leaned in close. “Show me your face, bitch. You like to talk back so much… Let me teach you a thing or two about manners or I’ll slice your neck.”

 

Jisung pulled his Beats free of the man’s grip and walked away from him for what felt like the hundredth time. Goddammit. If this guy touched his shit one more time he’d fucking _snap_!

 

The song continued, _that day you left!_

 

He was halfway through putting his headphones back on when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the guy reach for them yet again. Jisung lowered them before the man got his filthy hands on them. “Fine, asshole. I’ll give you two fucking minutes since you want me so goddamn bad.” He let a wicked smile slide across his own face but of course his mask blocked the view.

 

They had to get off the street. They had to get somewhere… private.

 

The first suitable place Jisung saw was an alleyway between two shops up ahead. The space between the brick buildings was pitch black at this time of night. The street was quiet enough, and the neighborhood was remote enough, that Jisung was sure he wouldn’t get caught. He walked farther up the sidewalk but at a far more leisurely pace.

 

“Two minutes?” The man grabbed Jisung’s arm again. “Bitch, I’ll take as long with you as I fucking want.” He spun Jisung around and waved the knife in front of Jisung’s face as if to remind him that he had it. Even the knife was old and worn out, Jisung noticed. Clearly something he snatched from the fucking kitchen drawer on his way out the door. The man growled, “Do as I say and you won’t get hurt. Now show me your pretty face.”

 

“I don’t show my face,” said Jisung. Then he added, “To _anyone_.” Not to Seungmin. Not to Jeongin. Not to Woojin. Not even to himself in the fucking mirror. If there was one thing in the world he hated more than being separated from Woojin, it was looking at his own goddamn face. “The mask stays on so if that creeps you out, go buy yourself a Fleshlight.” His music was still playing. He could hear the snare of the drums and the dissonant roll of the guitars as they chug-chug-chugged away.

 

_Eliminate the weak!_

 

Jisung kept his eyes locked on the other man’s, even when the knife was brought close to his ear. He could feel the cold blade drag over the cartilage. Not quite hard enough to draw blood but the serrated edge irritated his skin and, thus, irritated _him_. “So are we going to fuck or are you going to keep being a dick?”

 

A surprised chuckle left his attacker’s mouth. “There’s no one around to help you but you still act all high and mighty. Do you want to fucking die?” He glanced at the alleyway a few paces away from them and shoved Jisung towards it as if it were his own idea. Fantastic.

 

“I should be asking you that question,” said Jisung, letting himself be manhandled into the darkness and shoved against the brick.

 

“What the fuck did you just say?”

 

“I should be asking you if _you_ want to die.” Jisung let his powers go. The freezing cold inside of him became the freezing cold _outside_ of him. It was like letting out a breath he had been holding for a while.

 

Immediately, he felt relief.

 

Only a moment had passed but the temperature in the alley had dropped considerably. Jisung could see the man’s breath leave his mouth in thin clouds. The darkness around them seemed to press in nightmare close. Ice was starting to gather on the paved ground under their shoes, spreading and spreading and spreading around from Jisung’s fresh kicks and crawling up the brick walls on either side of the alley.

 

“Do you have a fucking deathwish?” The man asked, shoving Jisung more fiercely against the wall. It was obvious that he was not completely aware of the danger he had just gotten himself into. “Do you want to fucking die?”

 

_Everything will be alright with you by my side._

 

Jisung didn’t hear the dude. He was focusing on his tunes and had gotten distracted by the display of his own released powers. The ice was pretty when it got like this. It reflected the light of a distant street lamp and sparkled a bit like the rocks on a fresh necklace or like the glitter in a jeweled ring. Jisung was suddenly overwhelmed with the desire for a new necklace. It would be the first thing he’d ask of Woojin when he rescued him. Okay, maybe he’d ask for a hot fuck first but _then_ he’d ask for the necklace.

 

The man was still trying to be intimidating. “If you say anything else, I’ll cut your fucking throat-”

 

Jisung spun out of the man’s grip effortlessly. So quickly that his attacker didn’t even react. Didn’t have time to. Jisung grabbed the knife out of the man’s hand, put his hand on the man’s chest and had him shoved up against the brick wall before he could even shout out a “Jesus fuck!”

 

“Do you want to see my goddamn face that bad?” Jisung asked, breathing heavy. “It’s not much to fucking look at.” With one hand, he spun the blade of the knife over his knuckles as casually as if he were twirling a pen. With the other hand, he held the man in place against the wall. Jisung wasn’t very strong. Not physically. Under any other circumstances, the man could have shoved Jisung away and attacked him, but it would be hard for _anyone_ to move if they found their limbs stiffening under layer after layer of ice. “But since you’re gonna keep being a jackass, I’ll fucking show it to you.”

 

The guitars in his headphones ramped up. The vocals screamed.

 

_But ended up so different, you and I._

 

“What the fuck are you doing to me?” The man choked out, finally grasping on to the fact that he was in mortal danger. “Let me go.”

 

“Oh, _now_ you want to leave me alone instead of five minutes ago when I asked nicely?” Jisung pushed the knife into the pocket of his coat. It wasn’t very pretty but Woojin liked collecting knives and other non-pretty things. Like Jisung.

 

The man struggled but found himself unable to move too much now that the ice climbing across the brick walls had melded with the ice coating his arms and legs and torso. He was pinned. “W-what’s going-ing o-on? H-how a-are y-you d-d-d-d-oing th-thi-this?” His teeth chattered. His whole body shook. Jisung hated when he couldn’t understand what people were saying. The man spat out a coherent, “What the _fuck_ are you?”

 

Jisung smiled brightly. _That_ he could understand. “I’m a god,” he said. It was a fucking lie but in that moment it was the truth. To that man rushing headfirst towards the brink of death, it was nothing but the truth.

 

His song. The melody, it had been so rough and chaotic and madness-inducing before, but now it softened to something sickeningly sweet. The chord progression eased up like a drowning man finally managing to gasp at air and a guitar solo drifted out of Jisung’s headphones.

 

“Y-y-you’re c-cra-crazy,” the man stuttered out. Frost had settled in his facial hair and eyebrows. His lips were turning blue. His veins were turning visible beneath his paling skin. He was trembling so hard. A pathetic fucking mess. “Wh-wha-what are you d-d-d-doing to m-me?”

 

“I’m not doing anything,” Jisung feigned ignorance. He moved his hand from the man’s chest to his neck. He walked his fingers over the man’s jaw before settling his hand on the man’s hollow cheek in a freakish mockery of affection.

 

_Helped me out in times of need._

 

Jisung cooed, “I’m just showing you my face. It’s what you wanted, remember? You wanted it so bad even when I said no.” He raised his free hand to his cloth face mask and pulled it down over his slim nose, revealing his face. “This is what happens when you don’t listen, you son of a bitch.”

 

The man gasped at what he saw beneath the mask, at the numb sensation that overwhelmed him as his heartbeat slowed and slowed and slowed. The ice that was covering his body had reached his mouth and nose now and he choked in his mad attempt to swallow one last gulp of air. The man wheezed out a sound that was probably supposed to be the word ‘Stop’ or maybe even fucking ‘Sorry’ or some shit but Jisung couldn’t understand him so what the fuck was he supposed to do?

 

_Raised me up for when you were gone._

 

“Am I still fucking beautiful?” Jisung asked, leaning forward so that the man had no other choice but to stare into his glowing, ice-blue eyes. “Am I still fucking gorgeous?”

 

The man said nothing. _Could_ say nothing. Ice had settled in his mouth and nose and ears. His eyes were rolling to the back of his head as his body froze solid under Jisung’s wickedly gentle touch.

 

“Am I still hot as fuck?” Jisung asked with a giggle. Because, goddammit, wasn’t that funny? Hot? Ice? It was irony or whatever the hell that was and irony was funny. “You still think you’re ready for my mouth?” His temper flared when he received no response. “Answer me, fuckhead!”

 

The man let out one last strained sound and then became as quiet and still as death. The ice hardened over his eyes and then that was it. The deal was done.

 

Jisung took his silence as answer. “That’s what the fuck I thought.” He stepped away, admiring his frozen solid work like a museum visitor admiring a Van Gogh painting. Ugh. He hated it. Jisung turned away. “I don’t show my face to anyone-” he growled, pulling the face mask back over his nose, “-because I’m ugly as shit.” He checked his watch. All blacked out and expensive with fucking rose gold accents. Jisung smirked. He knew he only needed two minutes. Barely that.

 

His music still blared from his headphones, echoing loudly in the alley as the song hit its last few measures. The sound bouncing around and around as Jisung clamped down his powers, sucked in a breath and got his head back on straight. As the ice stilled, the lyrics of the song pierced the silence:

 

_Taught me to take no shit from anyone._

 

As the last chords of the song faded out, Jisung put his headphones back on, hit shuffle and walked out of the alleyway. He reached the sidewalk and kept heading towards the mountain and the hydroelectric plant.

 

“Don’t worry, Woojin,” he muttered to himself. He searched his coat pockets. His fingers touched the knife. Nah. Not what he needed. Not yet. He dug a little deeper and his fingers brushed over the stick of a lollipop. Score! Seungmin must have left it in there this morning! If there were two things in this shitty world Seungmin spent fucking money on, it was his data plan and candy. Jisung unwrapped the lollipop and stuck it in his mouth. Grape with bubblegum at the center. Fucking amazing.

 

Brand new determination lit a fire under Jisung’s ass and he practically sprinted down the sidewalk. The hydroelectric plant was about ten more minutes away. Out by the river. Halfway up the mountain.

 

A brand new song drowned his ears in noise noise noise. “I’m coming for you, Woojin. They fucked with the wrong one. For the last time. Those motherfuckers won’t know what hit them.”


	2. Awakening by In Vice Versa

The walk was long and quiet and slow. Longer and quieter and slower than Jisung anticipated. ‘Ten minutes away’ his ass. Maybe he’d been hanging out with Seungmin too much. He couldn’t tell time, either. Ugh. Jisung just wanted to fucking  _ be there _ already, have Woojin next to him already, but there were stupid fucking limitations in the way like only being able to run so far without losing his breath and wheezing like he was an old man.

 

Jisung had left the bustle of the city behind him and now there was nothing around him but snow-covered trees and snow-covered grass and snow-covered roads. Snow, snow, snow. Everywhere. And if he didn’t keep a goddamn lid on his powers, he’d be buried under the shit soon, too. He reeled in his powers as much as he could but it was like pouring water into a glass that was already overflowing. He just had so  _ much _ inside. He’d been good about staying calm this week, so the cold had just built up inside of him, steadily filling to the brim and taking up every ounce of space. He had let out a little bit earlier but the dude in the alley hadn’t been enough. That whole thing with him had only been a tiny little taste. An appetizer. Jisung needed something bigger to chew on. He needed to  _ let loose _ . As tightly wound as he felt, he could bury the whole mountain under a fuck ton of snow and he still wouldn’t be satisfied. He still wouldn’t feel empty.

 

He couldn’t wait to get to the hydroelectric plant.

 

Shit. If he could get right on in it and truly  _ fuck up _ a few peeps then maybe he’d feel better.

 

How dare they, though. He and Woojin could have been on their third fuck of the day but instead Jisung was on his third day being separated from him. It just pissed him the fuck off! The fucking cunts could have just come after him directly. He would have preferred that. Instead, they had gotten Woojin involved and as much as Jisung hated Woojin and wanted him to be taught a fucking lesson in humility or some shit, he also loved Woojin so only he should be allowed to teach him lessons in humility or whatever.

 

“They tried sending me a message by taking Woojin,” he growled out, reaching into his coat pocket. “But now it’s my turn to send a fucking message. I’m gonna crack open their fucking skulls. Slit their fucking throats. Crush their fucking bones. No one fucks with me.” He took a deep breath and yelled it at the mountain. “No one  _ fucks _ with me!” Not without getting their fingers and toes chopped off. Not without their balls being hacked up into bloody bits and force-fed to them.

 

Jisung pulled that lame alley dude’s kitchen knife out of his pocket and took a moment to come up with a name for it: Lucy. That was fucking pretty, wasn’t it? Like a star in the sky or some poetic shit like that. Jisung turned the knife this way and that in his hand, watching the light of the moon glint off of the serrated edge. It didn’t gleam like his ice powers or even shine like a genuine diamond necklace but the light it held was fascinating in a weird way of its own.

 

But then...

 

“Nah,” Jisung decided. “Lucy’s too pretty of a name for you.” He changed her name to Ariel because Ariel fucking sucked and this knife fucking sucked so they fucking suited each other. “Everything fucking sucks.”

 

He could tell just by looking at her that she was an old and dull knife. She probably spent most of her years either sawing chicken meat off the bones or fucking going to waste sitting in a drawer for days at a time. Would she even be sharp enough to cut open a bitch’s throat? Did she even have it in her? 

 

Meh. He could make due. 

 

Seungmin kept going on and on about how these guys were gonna be armed with guns and that they were basically the mob or whatever the fuck kinda fiction novel the dumbass computer nerd thought the real world was but what Seungmin didn’t understand, the super important fact he couldn’t wrap his fucking peewee brain around, was that Jisung had a run-in with this exact same group of cucks ages ago and Jisung had brought a knife to  _ that  _ gun fight, too.

 

And won.

 

Seungmin had yet to truly fucking fathom how big of a weapon anger could be.

 

It was savage. Brutal. Freezing cold. Sharper than any razor. Faster than any goddamn bullet. Anger got Jisung through every fight. Well, that and the fact that he was a walking fucking blizzard.

 

“There could be ten of those guys,” Jisung psyched himself up. “Or a hundred. I’ll mow all of them down if it means getting Woojin’s fine ass out of this. He doesn’t fucking deserve it.” Jisung pressed his thumb to Ariel’s edge and pushed down until he felt the pain open up like the tiniest little jolt of electricity through his nerves.

 

He raised his thumb and looked at it. Ariel had broken skin. Barely. Enough to make a single dark bead of blood bubble up on the pad of his thumb. He stuck his finger in his mouth and tasted copper on his tongue.  _ Almost _ sweet. Jisung pulled his thumb out of his mouth and stared at the knife, even more disappointed with her now. “Your name is fucking Sparkles,” he said, giggling at himself because a knife named Sparkles was fucking funny. “No one will be afraid of someone named Sparkles. They won’t expect to get hurt.”

 

It would be just like with him. He was short with skinny little twig legs and big, ugly eyes like a baby deer or some shit. When he yelled, people thought he was playing around, but then their laughter would always turn to screams of terror when he jumped into action.

 

Jisung swung Sparkles back and forth through the air in front of him, barely managing to get a whistle out of her. “Ugh. A screw must be loose in the handle,” he huffed. “The blade’s fucking jiggling around. Piece of shit. Fuck!” But Sparkles could still get the job done, he decided. She was heavier than she looked and the blade was long enough to  _ really _ get between someone’s rib cage. 

 

Any sharp edge could cut if you pressed down hard enough, right?

 

He let short little scenarios play out in his head: he’d sneak up on a guy from behind, grab them by the neck and put Sparkles through their goddamn eye or maybe he’d go for the throat and really cover the snow out here in blood. Or maybe he’d fashion a big icicle, something nice and girthy, and then just shove it down somebody’s throat until they couldn’t fucking breathe. Could he just get his hands around their jaw and blow some cold air down their throats? Maybe freeze their fucking organs? How long would they last that way?

 

The ideas were becoming steadily more torturous, sure, but he figured that no matter what he fucking did, no matter how heinous of an act he performed on the fuckers, his behavior would pale in comparison to the fact that the sick fucks had  _ kidnapped Woojin _ ! Snatched him off the goddamn streets when he was on the way home! Woojin was guilty of plenty of things but he was innocent in this. He had next to nothing to do with this petty little back and forth grudge between Jisung and these mercs. Snatching him was bad enough but then they dragged him out into the cold and fucking filmed him like he was less than a fucking dog!

 

God. Fucking. Dammit. 

 

Now he was pissed off all over again. 

 

Shit shit shit!

 

His powers almost spilled out of him. Not in a trickle but in a fucking  _ pour _ . He clamped his powers down with gritted teeth, giving himself the faintest of headaches.

 

Fuck.

 

If he didn’t let it out soon, he’d implode. He’d fucking bury the mountain in ice before he even got to the hydroelectric plant.

 

He needed some tunes. Yes. Some fucking music therapy would help him hold out until he got there! He pulled his phone out of his pocket and scrolled through a playlist. He needed something wild. Something loud and dissonant and senseless. Filthy guitars and dirty bass drums just pounding into his ear drums and making the shit bleed. He needed it. Bad. He needed a way to turn his thoughts to mush. It was the only way he’d be able to fucking focus and do this shit right.

 

He was just about to press play so that the brilliant noise would spill out of his Beats but then he heard an awfully familiar grinding screech rush up from behind him. He’d been so out of it that he hadn’t heard it until the last possible second.

 

Jisung rolled his eyes as Seungmin’s ancient four-door pulled across the snowy curb in front of him, blocking his path. Jisung was tempted to put some strong, icy wind underneath the shit-colored car and flip it out of his goddamn way but then he remembered that he actually _ tolerated _ Seungmin’s existence (sometimes) and he didn’t actually want to hurt the dude so he stopped himself from unleashing his power and just put his fists on his hips instead. “For fuck’s sake!”

 

Seungmin hollered out of the open passenger-side window at Jisung like he was a hooker off the street, “Hey, you!”

 

“What the flying fuck are you doing?” Jisung leaned towards the window and growled out, “I told you to stay the fuck out of my way, you motherfucking bitch.”

 

“I’m not in the way. I’m trying to help you, asshole.” Seungmin’s eyes darted down to Jisung’s hand. “What the hell are you doing with that big ass knife?”

 

“You worried,” Jisung shot back. “Afraid I’ll fucking use it on you?”

 

Seungmin hesitated just long enough for things to get awkward. He met Jisung’s eye. “No.”

 

Jisung rolled his eyes. He ignored the sudden urge to use the knife on Seungmin out of sheer fucking spite! To avoid acting out on his feelings, he stashed the knife back in his coat pocket and made himself take his hands off of it.

 

“Jisung, come the fuck on. I’m on your side, man.” Seungmin had such a baby voice. And a baby face. Looking like a kid when he was halfway through college. He was aware of his babyish looks, too, which was why he always wore a dress shirt and tie like that was a sign of goddamn maturity or something. It was why he kept most of his kid face hidden behind his shaggy hair, his nerdy, thick-rimmed glasses and his tiny, shitty mustache. He’d look less like an idiot if he just hid the lower half of his face with a mask like Jisung did. At least with a mask, you could disguise your fucked-up-ness with an umbrella term like ‘fashion.’ Seungmin just looked like a goddamn loser. A fucking environmental science teacher or something who only showered every two days in a bitch ass attempt to save the planet. Seungmin strained against his seatbelt and reached across the seat. He struggled a bit to manually unlock the passenger door and push it open. Jisung stepped back to avoid getting swatted in the hip by it. Calmly, Seungmin leaned back and ordered, “Get in the car.”

 

“I refuse,” said Jisung. He took a moment to peer up ahead. The road had turned into an uphill nightmare as the asphalt snaked up the tree-covered mountainside. It actually would be a  _ bitch _ to keep going on foot, but- “If I go with you, you’re going to stop me.”

 

“I’m legit trying to take you there,” Seungmin corrected him. “We’ll be there in no time at all. Come on. Get in. I just bought candy.” He reached into the back seat and held up a convenience store bag.

 

“Nope,” Jisung said. He was so angry. Too angry even for lollipops and chocolate bars and they were his favorite. This wasn’t even the kind of anger that exploded outward and destroyed everything. No. It was that super intense kind of anger that just hardened inside and  _ hurt _ . The pressure in his chest could flatten coal into diamonds. 

 

The tiniest bit of his powers slipped through his grasp. 

 

The wind picked up, making the thick evergreen trees sway a little harder.

 

The falling snow thickened, making it so that Jisung couldn’t even see the bend in the road up ahead.

 

“Come on, Jisung.” Seungmin was still trying to bribe him, unaware of Jisung’s mood change. “I’ll even let you play your so-called  _ music  _ on the way.”

 

Jisung leaned forward through the window and stared at Seungmin. His voice muffled by his mask, he repeated, “If I go up there with you, you are going to stop me.”

 

It was the same statement, but in the vast silence that followed, Seungmin had the time to sit and interpret it differently. Jisung was a living, breathing catastrophe about to do something insanely stupid like jump headfirst into a trap laid out specifically for him. He was angry and not thinking straight and couldn’t even accept help. It was a recipe for disaster. The bag of candy was discarded in the back seat. “What if you hurt Woojin in the process?” Seungmin’s voice was hardly audible over the whine of his shit car’s shit engine. “If I’m not there to keep you under control, you could hurt Woojin just like you’ll hurt the rest of them.”

 

That was the last straw.

 

Jisung kicked the passenger door shut. Hard enough to make Seungmin yelp and flinch backwards. “What the fuck,” he shouted. “Why the hell would you do that? I’m being nice!”

 

“That’s your fucking problem, Seungmin,” said Jisung through clenched teeth. He put his palm on the roof of the car and sucked in a deep breath. He let a little bit more of his powers loose. The tension he’d been carrying in his stomach eased but only by the slightest bit. He still had to hold back. He couldn’t let it all out just yet. But even then, his powers were devastating. The cold shot through his system and bubbled up out of his fingertips, spreading ice across the roof of Seungmin’s car. “You’re still under the backwards as fuck impression that I can’t control myself.” But he had absolute control. In seconds, the layers of ice on the car’s roof had thickened and spread across the front windshield. “You’re still under the impression that I’m fucking  _ dangerous _ .” He was. But only when he needed to be. How come no one saw that? “You really think I’m going to go up there and hurt Woojin? Even by accident?”

 

The bite in his tone made Seungmin wince and press himself backwards against the driver’s seat.

 

His behavior was so clown-like that Jisung couldn’t help but snort back laughter. “That’s what the hell I mean,” Jisung yelled. More of his power slipped out of him. Snow swirled and swirled around him, covering Seungmin’s car like dirt over a coffin in a grave. The snow covered the road and the grass and the trees, blanketing everything in white. Jisung lowered his voice to the roar of rushing rapids. “You call yourself my fucking friend but if you were my  _ friend _ you wouldn’t feel like you have to run away from me.”

 

“Jisung,” Seungmin yelled. Not because he’d been called out but because he had realized far too late what the blue-haired man was doing to his car. Frantically, Seungmin grabbed at the gear shift and threw his car into reverse. He slammed his foot on the gas to try and peel out. Anything to get away from Jisung’s cruel, frigid presence. It was too late, though. The vehicle didn’t move. The engine revved and the tires spun but ice had gotten too thick under the rubbers. The worn-out things couldn’t even  _ pretend _ to catch a grip on the ice, spinning in place. The car windows and windshields had become so obscured by snow and ice that the glass was impossible to see out of. The vehicle was entirely useless. Just like Seungmin. The man leaned out of the window. “Jisung, please,” his voice cracked in desperation. “Do you know how fucking long this shit’s gonna take to defrost?”

 

“That’s the entire goddamn point!” Jisung backed away from the car. He was suddenly quite thankful that he’d forced himself to let go of the kitchen knife. Seungmin’s cheap ass seats would be covered in red otherwise. “Stay the fuck out of this. You’ll only get in the way. Like always.” 

 

“Please, Jisung,” Seungmin cried out. He attempted to crawl out of the half-open passenger window but he was too broad-shouldered to fit. He let out a panicked screech. “I promise, I won’t stop you! I promise I won’t get in the way. Just don’t go without me.”

 

“Why,” Jisung snapped at him. “What the hell are you going to do?  _ I’m _ the freak, remember?” He let out a chuckle. “ _ I’m _ the god.”

 

“This is what the fuck I’m talking about,” Seungmin went on. He slammed his fist on the window in frustration. “You’re not invincible. If I’m there, I can at least-”

 

“Shut up,” Jisung cut him off.   

 

Seungmin’s words didn’t matter. His annoying, screechy bat voice didn’t fucking matter. He never had anything worth saying!

 

Jisung had already told him not to get involved. Jisung had already demanded that he steer clear of this whole mess so that he wouldn’t need to hold back. Jisung just wanted to go out and fuck some bitches up. He wasn’t going to hurt anyone. Not anyone worth two shits to him, at least. The rest of them deserved to be walked all over. So why was Seungmin always there spewing words like words could ever change things? Words were worthless. Nothing but noise. And not even the good, mind-numbing kind of noise.

 

“Maybe they just want to talk,” Seungmin attempted. “Maybe you don’t have to do anything… destructive.”

 

“They lost the right to talk to me the second they took Woojin,” said Jisung. “I’ll be damned if I talk to anyone. What could they possibly say that will keep me from taking their heads off?”

 

“But Jisung, what if-”

 

“Shut up!”

 

Seungmin was like a fucking chihuahua or something. All that stupid, aggressive yapping but it was all just hot air because when you stepped up to him, when you made yourself seem the  _ tiniest _ bit bigger than him, he retreated to the shadows and pissed himself with fear. 

 

Jisung smirked and stepped around the hood of the old car and continued up the road, ignoring Seungmin’s shouting and the annoying beep of his car horn. 

 

Jisung didn’t need help. 

 

He’d survived with these powers for all of these fucking years without help. He was a god, after all. And all gods were fucking lonely. 

 

Getting shit done by himself wasn’t new. 

 

Carrying big ass burdens by himself wasn’t new. 

 

Or scary. 

 

Or hard. 

 

To him, it was all normal. Expected. He’d strap the weight of the world to his back if he had to.

 

✁✃✁

 

Jisung was getting his brand new kicks soaking fuck wet in the snow and all smudged on the sides from road debris and dirt.

 

Fuck!

 

He balanced on one leg and wiped shit off of them but it was probably too late. They were white, too. He’d never get the stains out without messing them the hell up.

 

Jisung stomped up the side of the road. Woojin hadn’t even gotten to see them yet! Not when they were crisp and clean and creaseless, anyways. Now Jisung would show up to rescue Woojin in mucky shoes with grime all over his pants, looking like a fucking herb! They hadn’t even gotten the chance to fuck while he was wearing them.

 

Shit shit shit!

 

At least he had looked good for a little while. Even gotten some jealousy-fueled attention from a hater in hand-me-downs.

 

For lack of a better phrase, the shoes had… served their purpose.

 

He’d paid a fuck ton for them and he knew when he left that it was stupid as fuck to wear them outside in this weather and go  _ hiking in the mountains _ in them but if the shoes were ruined, he’d throw them out without remorse. Life was all about discarding what was useless and Jisung was pretty good at that. Seungmin was still on the side of the road, he bet.

 

Jisung would probably toss the shoes out before he went back to the apartment.

 

Hey, didn’t that tiny dick fucker off the street want his shoes? Maybe Jisung would be generous and give them to- Oh wait. The guy was just a frostbitten corpse now. Oops. He’d forgotten already.

 

Jisung sighed, glancing down to give the shoes another once over. The kicks would just have to go in the garbage, then. He’d buy others. He didn’t like the way they clenched around his toes anyway.

 

He continued up the mountainside. At this rate, he’d be exhausted before he even got there.

 

Goddammit. Should he have accepted that ride from Seungmin after all?

 

Nah. Fuck that bitch.

 

The two-lane road wrapped around a thick copse of trees. The snow let up for the briefest moment and Jisung glanced skyward just in time to catch sight of the moon hanging low and fat and yellow in the clear, star-dotted blackness of night. Then the wind changed direction and the snow obscured the sight again.

 

Before Jisung knew it, a tall chain link fence loomed out of the white emptiness of falling snow. The hydroelectric plant stood behind it, lonely and faintly humming and lit up by hundreds of white lights. It was a new and contemporary building but it still somehow managed to look like a prison way out here. The dam was on the other side of those trees so he couldn’t see it but he could hear the rushing water. He could feel it shake the ground. 

 

Yesterday’s snow had been plowed so it sat on the ground in massive piles but today’s snow made the roads and parking lots useless all over again. Icicles hung from the supports of the nearby water tower and the tiny little buildings with their galvanized metal siding made weird crackling noises as they shifted in the harsh wind. 

 

“Fucking shit,” Jisung hissed under his breath, pulling his mask down from over his nose. His breath didn’t make a single cloud in the air because it was cold outside and he was cold inside. “There’s a million of the fuckers.”

 

There weren’t quite a  _ million _ , but the fuckers in question were numerous and were all gathered in front of the plant’s main building, chatting and laughing, all lined up like they were waiting for him specifically. 

 

Of course they were. They had to be. 

 

He didn’t know much about security at hydroelectric plants but he doubted this was their go-to equipment.

 

They all wore beefy protective gear: arctic camo uniforms, helmets and bulletproof vests. They had guns strapped over their shoulders. Not pistols but the serious kind. The kind of guns that would make anyone else turn around and go home. The kind of shit that would make him hesitate if Jisung wasn’t pissed the hell off. The kind of artillery that would scare him if he gave more than a single fuck about himself.

 

No need for strategy or stealth. He’d walk straight in. 

 

They wouldn’t stand a goddamn chance.

 

Even with their guns.

 

Jisung pictured Woojin for a second, just a second, and it was all the motivation that he needed.

 

“I’m coming for you, babe,” Jisung whispered. He pulled his mask back up over his face. He pulled his Beats up from around his neck and slid them on over his ears. He would turn his shit up as loud as it could go and if the fuckers on the other side of the fence heard him coming, so be it. His music would be the last thing they heard before they died. He mumbled, “The only way they’ll stop me is if they put me in my fucking grave.” He reached into his pocket for his phone and scrolled through his playlists. He initially thought that he wanted something fast and aggressive and heavy to kick ass to but when he saw a particular album cover and remembered a certain song, he changed his mind. He needed a bassline that would eat away at his good sense. A tempo that would get his cold, dead heart pumping. A melody that would get all contorted and stretched and sharp, then bore directly into his head and make him feel like he was catching the goddamn plague. 

 

He needed _ this _ .

 

Jisung pressed play.


	3. Belcarra by Spiritbox

Immediately, the guitars were in his fucking ears. Not even a tap on the high hat as a warning. Just instant insanity. The riff was chaotic. Inharmonious. Filthy and unforgiving and heavy. Just the way he liked it.

 

The kick of the drums pounded into his skull. Collapsed on top of him and crushed him. It was all damn near impossible to withstand. It was a violently beautiful tornado of sound that lifted him right off the ground like he was ascending to heaven.

 

He opened his eyes. The vocals came in.

 

_Touch the shell. Only traces remain like a stain on the bedpost._

 

Hallelujah.

 

“Fuck,” Jisung exhaled in bliss. He rapidly pressed the volume up button on the side of his phone only to discover it was already at its max. Dammit! He shoved his phone into his back pocket. “Shit.” He could work with this, though. Jisung closed his eyes, exhaled and took a moment or two to lose himself in the twisted chord progression.

 

_Where I lay, chamber fades, second stage._

 

Jisung felt so uplifted, so fucking free, so goddamn holy, that his physical body dissolved.

 

He was flesh and blood, yes, but he transcended such earthly constraints and became nothing but snow and fog and mist and fucking rage. His existence fractured into hundreds of thousands of molecules. Revolving around each other like planets around the damn sun. That’s how powerful he was. In his new state, he didn’t have to breathe or think. He just _was_. He passed through the chain link fence in front of him, feeling a strange pull around every single fiber of his being as the wind threatened to sweep him away. For a moment, he nearly let it.

 

No.

 

Fuck no.

 

He couldn’t!

 

It took every ounce of his strength to resist the desire to simply _splinter_.

 

Fuck!

 

_I am tied to the venom._

 

He was Han Jisung. He had been with Woojin for an entire goddamn year. He was pissed the hell off and wanted nothing else in the world but to get his Woojin back. He would teach all these fucks who took Woojin from him a goddamn lesson! With these thoughts pulsing through his many pieces, he held himself together. He stayed himself only through the heat of his anger.

 

_I feel it compressing. They call it a blessing._

 

The sound waves vibrated through his million and one shards, carrying the song from one end of him to the other. The sound… it was all around him. The noise consumed him, took him over and, he realized, was loud enough to _reach_ him.

 

Finally.

 

_I call it my grave._

 

Floating took a hell of a lot more work than running, but once he got all the bits of himself moving, he became consumed with the kind of elation that could only come from being given wings. Jisung closed the distance between himself and the line of mercs. To them, he was probably nothing but arctic wind. Jisung changed his direction and headed straight towards the merc farthest on the right. The one who had made the awful mistake of having his back turned. Of having his hands off of his weapon as he fucking pissed on a tree stump.

 

_I latched to a heart so clinical._

 

The mercs were still unaware of their impending doom. They talked amongst themselves casually, commenting on hockey games on TV they were missing out on because of this or describing all of the things they’d buy with the fat ass paychecks they’d get for completing the task. They asked each other for restaurant recommendations as if any of them would fucking be alive to eat _anywhere_ after the next five minutes.

 

_I was alive to fight._

 

Only a handful of the cucks even seemed to remember that they were on a job, pointing their high-powered flashlights into the mess of fluttering snow around them, their guns close to their hands. Waiting. Ready.

 

But not ready enough.

 

Not for him.

 

_It feels unnecessary. Pressure is a mortuary._

 

Jisung pulled himself together. Legitimately grabbing and gathering and _yanking_ to fit the puzzle pieces of himself into the right order. Swirling snow solidified into stick arms and stick legs. Mist coalesced, shaping his blue hair and his freckled skin and his crooked teeth. The cold air threaded together and formed his face and his clothes and his nails. The more of him he got back in one piece, the more the melody blasting into his ears fell the fuck apart.

 

_I lost static like a ritual._

 

All together again, Jisung stepped down into the calf-deep snow with the tiniest grunt of effort. After being lighter than air for a few seconds, he had to get used to how goddamn heavy his body was again. How fucking hard gravity pulled on him. Another step forward and he was right behind the urinating merc.

 

With a flick of his wrist, Jisung drew Sparkles from out of his coat pocket and reversed his grip on the handle.

 

“Now… just like you fucking pictured in your head,” he coached himself as he took another step forward.

 

He had said it loud enough for the merc to hear him and start to turn around, his yellow stream following him across the snow in a sputtering arc.

 

_I feel it compressing._

 

Jisung grabbed the merc by his helmet and swiftly yanked the man’s head straight back just so that he could see the surprised look on the fucker’s face before he drove Sparkles through their right eye. Jisung couldn’t feel the cold wind around him, but he could feel the warmth of fresh blood on his hand as the crimson of it volcanoed upward.

 

_They call it a blessing._

 

“Goddammit,” Jisung muttered. He was completely let down. When he’d gone over things in his head, his imagination had taken this scenario in a different direction. He had expected there to be more… resistance. He thought the merc would fight back. Struggle. Jisung imagined that he’d have to really drive Sparkles in there good but the man’s eyeball had splattered with the ease of crushing a grape.

 

The merc opened his mouth but no scream came out. Yellow teeth chomped down on a pink tongue. Red blood gushed.

 

But no screams.

 

A true pity.

 

Jisung let go of Sparkles, the now useless piece of shit, and dropped the merc to the ground, leaving the man to squirm in the snow, clutching his bleeding face and kicking his feet as agony consumed him from head to toe.

 

_I call it my grave._

 

The other mercs were too far away to hear or see what had happened. The wind was too loud. The snow was too thick in the air. Weren’t they supposed to be fucking professionals? Why weren’t they looking? He wanted to get shot at already, goddammit.

 

Jisung ran towards the next merc he could see. They were taller. Beefier. Solid like a fucking tank but it didn’t matter how many pounds of muscle he had on him because all flesh could and _would_ succumb to frostbite. Jisung released his power a little and it gushed out of him in a blast of freezing air. He splayed his fingers and raised his hand like he was lifting something invisible yet heavy. Nothing happened at first, but when he _pulled_ a little harder, a solid spear of ice rose out of the ground right behind the merc. The ice crackled as it pushed up from beneath the earth and snow. The odd sound made the merc turn around. There was an awkward pause as the two of them made eye contact, as the merc questioned what it was he was seeing. _Who_ it was he was seeing running up on him. His hesitance gave the opening Jisung needed. He ran up to the man and kicked him hard in the shin, knocking a foot out from under him and making the man wobble and lose his balance. Jisung grabbed the man by the front of his bulletproof vest and pulled on him.

 

Not too hard. Just enough to make the man slip on a slick of ice that may not have been there a second before.

 

“Hope you didn’t make any plans tonight,” Jisung cooed at him.

 

Once all of that height and all of that fucking stupidity trapped in that big ass head and all of that beefy muscle started tilting, that was the end of it. There was no stopping it. The man went down fast and hard and there was no place for him to land but face first onto the sharp spike of ice Jisung had created.

 

Jisung watched in wide-eyed fascination as the ice speared through the merc’s shoulder. It cut clean fucking through with a moist ripping sound. Blood and cloth and kevlar fiber spilled all over the place. This time, at least, the mercenary let out a scream. High, whiny and shrill like a total bitch.

 

Fucking embarrassing.

 

Which was why it made Jisung laugh.

 

As if in slow-motion, the other mercs turned around to face the cackling and, step by languid step, drew close. The shortest of the group spotted the bright red of fresh blood on the snow first and then he pointed at the collapsed body. “What the fuck,” he choked out, mouth wide open in horror. “What the hell happened here?”

 

A second merc pressed a hand over his own shoulder as if he, too, could feel the chunk of ice piercing him.

 

Jisung had already dissolved into mist again, wrapping himself around the branches of a pine tree above them and becoming clear, sharp icicles hanging from the bark.

 

“What did you do to yourself, man,” another merc asked the fallen, struggling man.

 

“This isn’t some prank,” someone else scolded him. “You can see bone.”

 

“Then how the hell did this happen?”

 

The man with the ice through his shoulder flailed and fought to right himself but his boots couldn’t quite reach the snow and the more he wriggled, the farther onto the spear he fell, worsening his pain.

 

One of the mercs rushed up to the speared man in a belated attempt to administer some type of first aid.

 

The man with the ice through his shoulder waved his hand as if trying to shoo the onlookers away. In the middle of a guttural scream, he managed to let out, “He’s here!”

 

That was all the others needed to hear.

 

“That son of a bitch!”

 

“Where?”

 

“How the fuck did he get this close?”

 

“Radio our client!”

 

Their rapid fire voices were almost swallowed whole by the wind.

 

Their earlier curiosity vanished. Hell, even their concern for their skewered comrade was squashed. They all became the mercenaries they were hired to be. The men pressed their backs to each other and held their guns up and at the ready. The red laser sights of their weapons swung left and right, searching for anything in the snow. Someone shouted orders to the others. Something about formations. Something about non-lethal force. Something about ‘don’t kill him, apprehend him.’

 

Fuck that noise.

 

Jisung would rather have his body riddled with bullets than be a fucking _prisoner_. They would have to kill him before they would ever fucking catch him. He’d make damn well sure of that.

 

With some effort, Jisung dragged the pieces of himself together again, wrapping his hands and ankles around the tree branch, suspending himself over the heads of the mercenaries. Why a single one of the fuckers didn’t bother to _look up_ was beyond him. Not one? Among the seven or nine or fourteen of them? Not a single damn one?

 

It would be their last mistake.

 

His headphones were the last thing to solidify around his head and then the song was back in his eardrums, the tempo thrumming down his vertebrae and making his heart shake. His favorite part was coming up so he waited a bit for it to start. Ahhh. There. The layers of guitars peeled back, leaving behind something minimal and atmospheric. Just simple, distorted bass.

 

The song _almost_ became something soft. Digestible. Pleasant.

 

The singer’s voice, pure beastial up to this point, turned borderline angelic as she sang, _I feel a darkness survive off my beating heart._

 

Jisung dropped down from his perch. He felt the wind in his hair. He almost shouted in delight.

 

He surrounded his fist in a thick block of ice and swung it down on the head of a dude with the force of an avalanche, sending the man head first into the snow. The merc’s helmet split down the middle like the shell of an egg but instead of yolk oozing out from between the cracks, it was blood and brain.

 

_I was alive when the sun went down._

 

“What’s up, motherfuckers,” Jisung called out, getting to his feet. “Looking for me?”

 

Someone opened fire.

 

“We need him alive. Don’t shoot,” their commander shouted, too late.

 

Jisung waved his hand and created a disk of ice in front of his chest just in time to stop the bullets. He threw the disk at the merc who shot at him and the heavy thing sliced through the man’s throat, almost completely decapitating him. Blood spewed out of his neck and he stumbled and fell to his knees, grasping at his throat and squirming in the snow before lying very still.

 

One of the men panicked. “The hell is going on?”

 

“Just rush him,” someone else said. “It’s just one scrawny fucking brat!”

 

_I was alive when the sun went down._

 

Someone rushed up on him. Got all up in his face. “Fuck,” Jisung squeaked out, surprised.

 

Usually, when the blood started flying, people started running _away_ from him. He forgot that the fucks were trained professionals. They would probably continue to run at him. But they would be little more than lambs to the slaughter.

 

The merc grabbed Jisung by the throat and shook him like they were trying to strangle him. Jisung choked for air. He started seeing spots in his vision. Fuck! How hard were they squeezing? Were they actually trying to fucking kill him? He wasn’t about to wait and find out. His vision was blurring around the edges so his depth perception or whatever was off by a fuck ton but after a bit of fruitless reaching, he finally got a hand on the man’s chest. That one touch was all he needed. He pushed his power outwards and ice started creeping off of his fingers and spreading over the man’s clothing, crawling up his neck. This one was smart. He picked up on what Jisung was doing and immediately let go of him, pulling away to escape the icy touch of death. The man raised his gun.

 

_I feel a darkness..._

 

The barrel was but a breath away from Jisung’s forehead and his finger was a hair’s width off the trigger.

 

Jisung was still coughing and sucking air into his lungs. He barely had the thought to fear for his life. More out of instinct than anything, he reached up a hand and grabbed the gun by its barrel. It froze instantly. Ice clogged up all of its mechanical bits or however the fuck guns worked. The merc pulled the trigger but because of all the ice, it misfired. Smoke and shrapnel exploded from the wrong end of the gun, detonating in the merc’s face and ripping tears in his skin, sending him screaming and running.

 

“Who’s next?” Jisung cackled, completely lost in the bloodlust.

 

A deep voice growled out from somewhere beside him, “Me.”

 

Pain exploded across Jisung’s nose. Hot like a branding iron. His eyes rolled to the back of his head. Gravity spun him all around. He could almost feel his brain slosh around in his skull. What the flying fuck happened to him? Why the fuck was he in so much pain? Jisung raised a hand to his nostrils and his fingers came away coated with his own blood. Wait. Had he just been _punched_ in the goddamn face? Jisung regained his senses and his footing, glancing over his shoulder just in time to see one of the mercs grin in his face like he’d just won a carnival prize. “Fuck you,” Jisung grunted. His mask must have slid down his face in the fight. He pulled it back up over his nose.

 

“Try it, babydoll.”

 

The nickname was all too familiar. A switch was flipped somewhere in him. Jisung swung his own tiny little fist at the dude and put his knuckles into the man’s stomach but it was like punching a brick wall. Pain reverberated up Jisung’s hand so intensely that he thought he’d broken his wrist.

 

“Was that supposed to fucking hurt,” the soldier laughed in his face, puffing up their chest like that meant something.

 

“No, but this was,” Jisung responded. He turned his fist clockwise like he was turning a key in a lock. He was turning something, alright. A giant icicle through the lining of the man’s stomach.

 

The mercenary let out of a spine-chilling scream and backed away from Jisung, the chunk of ice still jutting from his gut.

 

Jisung focused on his song again. The singer’s voice was like a soothing lullaby. _And when you’re touching a lie, are you thinking of me?_

 

Someone else ran forward and punched Jisung in the gut.

 

Thank fuck he hadn’t eaten anything recently or he would have fucking lost it right then. Instead, haggard gasps and phlegmy spit fell out of him but it tasted so damn disgusting, he wished it had been bile instead.

 

“Surround him,” someone else ordered. “Detain him. Why the hell is this taking so long?”

 

“He’s shooting fucking ice out of his fingers!”

 

“Just catch him, for fuck’s sake!”

 

“Never in a million fucking years,” Jisung retorted. He spun away from a pair of hands reaching for him and ran up to a shorter, slimmer mercenary. Jisung exhaled. Subzero wind billowed out of his lungs and, in mere seconds, the man’s face had turned blue and lifeless, his expression of panic and pain permanently frozen on his almost-handsome face. Jisung, still running, leaped into the air to get some momentum going and then punched the merc in the face. Honestly, his tiny little fist shouldn’t have done much to a man that much more fit than he was but the whole lower half of the man’s jaw came completely loose, made fragile by the sudden freeze. It split apart into several distinct chunks and hit the snow with disgusting, wet plops. The corpse toppled over into the snow, its face now hideously disfigured.

 

More gunshots. Louder. Closer. Hell, maybe even more accurate.

 

“Don’t fucking shoot, you shitheads,” the commander screamed.

 

_I know I’m scratching a lie and I’m finding a thief._

 

Jisung heard the bullets cut through his music and whizz past his ear. He felt one tear through the sleeve of his coat, barely missing his arm.

 

_I was alive..._

 

What?

 

How dare they ruin his clothes. How dare they fucking shit on his wardrobe! Didn’t they know how much this shit cost!?

 

_...sun went down._

 

Letting out a scream of rage, Jisung twisted the tap off of his powers until the handle came loose and _everything_ fucking rushed out. Overflowed.

 

The relief was instant. It made him shiver.

 

Yes. Like this. This was what he needed.

 

He just couldn’t keep holding back anymore.

 

The quietness of the song was destroyed. The soft interlude was over and the full force of the guitars came in, sending his brain to fucking oblivion.

 

_All the lies, all the shame._

 

Power flowed through him freely now. His hair shimmered like diamonds as ice crystals formed among the strands. Winter wind swirled around him, faster and faster, until he stood at the eye of a small snowstorm. He saw the orange flashes of light from gun muzzles as bullets were fired at him but the lethal things became eaten up by the force of his might. “Do you know why I’m here?” Jisung shouted at the top of his lungs, making sure to let the wind carry and amplify his rage. “Do you know why none of you deserve to live?” He wanted all of these cocksucking dickwads to get the message. “Because you fucked with me and _no one_ fucks with me. Especially the son of a bitch who hired you.” It probably made little sense to anyone but him but who cared about making sense when he was this pissed? Who cared about justification when there was only one goddamn thing in the world he wanted to know: “WHERE IS HE?”

 

_Cleanliness washed away._

 

Beneath the howl of the wind, Jisung heard shouts and more gunfire but no one seemed to be answering his fucking question. No one was telling him where Woojin was. Well, he’d _almost_ considered going easy on them.

 

Now they had to pay.

 

Jisung heard someone running across the snow toward him. The flashlight strapped to their chest gave away their exact location. He swung his hand in a wide arc in front of him. The air at his fingertips dropped rapidly in temperature, the moisture freezing instantly. He flung the razor sharp blade of air forward and watched as it sawed through the man’s legs, right beneath his kneecaps. There was a harrowing scream, a spray of blood and then the flashlight moving towards him toppled forward into the snow and went out.

 

“Where’s the challenge,” he asked no one in particular, even as blood from his busted up nose trickled into his mouth.

 

_Chamber fades in this venom too late._

 

The man whose legs had been severed continued to scream but the noise was no longer pleasant and was just annoying. Jisung spun away. If none of these fuckers were going to tell him where Woojin was, he’d just have to wreck the whole goddamn plant.

 

They couldn’t stop him. What could they do against a god?

 

His phone, not built to withstand such low temperatures, shut off immediately.

 

His music died and, with it, his method of coping.

 

Jisung was forced to come back down to reality. To live with the knowledge that these people would go _so far_ to hurt him. That they hated him and feared him and resented him so much that they would put him through this much pain just to send a message.

 

Goddammit.

 

Jisung was lost without his music. Mentally and literally.

 

Where the hell was he? He’d gotten so spun around in the altercation that he wasn’t particularly sure which direction he needed to be running in.

 

He stepped forward facing what he hoped was the correct direction and nearly ran right into one of the mercs. Jisung fashioned a knife out of ice that fit perfectly in his hand. Sharp. Narrow. Cold. Ahh, now this one was pretty and worthy of being named Lucy. Before the merc even became aware of his presence, before the man could even spot him through the whirling snow, Jisung lunged forward and drove Lucy through the man’s neck and then shoved him out of the way.

 

Where the hell was the hydroelectric plant? It should have been easy to spot since it was lit up like a Christmas tree but his anger had stirred up so much sleet and snow that he could barely see his own hand held out in front of him.

 

Which way was which?

 

Fuck fuck fuck. He wished he had his music. How did people go through life without it?

 

He yanked his useless Beats down off of his ears and hung them around his neck. “Woojin,” he yelled into the howling wind. “Woojin, where are you?” He picked a direction and ran.

 

The next merc almost got the drop on him. They had fucking come up behind him and had thrown their thick, tree trunk arms around his middle and fucking hoisted him off the ground! But they may as well have attempted to hug an iceberg. Jisung was _so cold_ that the merc’s skin burned. He wailed in pain and attempted to let Jisung go but it was too late for that. Jisung was so fucking cold that, just from those brief seconds of contact, the mercenary’s body temperature dropped rapidly and his heart fucking failed him just that fucking quick. Nearly frozen solid, the merc became little more than deadweight and fell over, taking them both down into the snow. It took all of Jisung’s effort to crawl out from under all of that stiff, unmoving weight and keep it moving.

 

“Where is he?” No one seemed willing to answer him.

 

A few moments may have passed. Perhaps an entire minute. Then he caught sight of the main plant building. He was much closer to it than he thought.

 

He barely got another step forward before a merc was tackling him. All of that weight slammed into him like he’d gotten hit by a car. Jisung’s breath left him in a strained wheeze. His feet left the ground from the impact. He would have hit the snow if the merc hadn’t grabbed him by the hood of his coat and yanked him upright like he wasn’t any heavier than a feather.

 

Jisung was so cold.

 

...but then he was warm.

 

It took him a moment but he connected the dots. The heat building and building in his left side was the sharp, burning pain of a goddamn combat knife, buried in him hilt-deep.

 

Shit shit shit.

 

That fucking _hurt_!

 

His body, his whole world, came to a sudden and aching halt.

 

The warmth of his own blood spilled down his side and gathered in his pants like he’d pissed himself.

 

Jisung glanced down. He almost couldn’t believe it even after he laid eyes on the blade jammed into his flesh. Even after watching the blood gush out of him. The merc’s fat, meaty hands were still wrapped knuckle-white around the handle.

 

Shit.

 

When would these fools learn to stop tearing up his clothes? He’d never be able to wear this motherfucking coat again! It was his favorite but, hell, it couldn’t be anymore. All thanks to this motherfucker.

 

Jisung hawked up the fatest loogie and spat on the dude’s knuckles.

 

“You sick fuck,” the merc growled into his ear.

 

“I bet you’re into this kinda shit,” Jisung snorted. He hawked up another loogie and spat on the man’s hand again.

 

The merc spoke through clenched teeth. “You think that’s gonna make it hurt less? You think that’s gonna make me let go?” He twisted the knife the tiniest bit to prove his point.

 

Pain tore through Jisung’s system. He wasn’t used to this. Wasn’t he a god? Why was he losing? He coughed. “You deserve what’s coming next.”

 

“You think you’re in a position to talk shit?”

 

Jisung smirked. “Yes.” All of his spit gathered on the man’s fist spread unnaturally over his fingers and then hardened into thick, yellowy ice.

 

“Wh-wh-what?” The merc gasped out, teeth chattering as his body cooled and he lost sensation in his hand. “You f-fr-fre-freak.” His eyes never left the brand new ice block at the end of his arm.

 

“Speak clearly,” Jisung snapped. Then he brought his elbow down on the man’s fist. The whole thing shattered with the ease of a plate of fine china landing on a hardwood floor. It was pretty gruesome. Bone snapped into pieces. Blood dripped from ripped flesh.

 

The merc wailed and backed away, leaving Jisung with nothing but the knife buried in his side.

 

This wasn’t a problem, Jisung told himself repeatedly. He could live through this. He could live through anything. He would casually stroll through all nine circles of hell if it meant being at Woojin’s side. Not a single soul on this planet was half as dedicated as him. Jisung held his hand over his wounded side and blasted himself with freezing cold air, covering the knife and his gaping wound with a thin layer of ice. Anything to stop the bleeding. Anything to numb the pain. He decided that Woojin had to be inside the hydroelectric plant somewhere. Jisung would go inside and destroy everything and probably leave half the city without electricity, but none of that meant anything to him. Nothing would matter until he knew Woojin was safe and sound.

 

In a few more steps, he was face to face with the front doors. He tried the handles. Locked. Of course.

 

Jisung redirected the icy winds around him and sent the gale battering against the front doors of the plant. It took a bit, but the glass warped and shattered inward from the chill and Jisung stepped over the ruined door frame and walked into the building as casually as if they were sliding doors that had invited him inside.

 

“Woojin,” he shouted. “Where are you? Yell if you can. I’ll come running.”

 

No reply.

 

He attempted to run but had to stop.

 

Shit. Did getting stabbed in the side really hurt this much? He couldn’t move himself too much faster than a pitiful half-jog.

 

“Woojin,” he cried out. He crossed the empty, echoing lobby and moved farther into the building, shuffling down a carpeted hallway.

 

There didn’t seem to be a sound in the place except for his own rapid panting. He kicked open doors and peered around corners but there was no sign of any other mercs and definitely no sign of Woojin.

 

He pushed open a heavy wooden door and found himself in a new section of hallway. Try as he might, though, but every supply room and office and bathroom stall he peered into was dark and empty and Woojin-less.

 

Shit.

 

Jisung found his steps slowing and slowing, even as his determination burned taller and taller. The knife in his side was killing him and the throbbing pain from being sledgehammered in the gut nearly made him dry heave.

 

Being indoors felt like being choked. The air was so warm and so dry here. The lack of humidity wrung him out before he’d even reached the end of the second hallway.

 

Fuck fuck fuck.

 

The mercenaries hadn’t been the trap. Being indoors was!

 

“Goddammit, they got me,” he choked out.

 

Heat was pumping through the vents at max output. He could hear it in the pipes. The hot air made him feel sluggish and ill and ridiculously parched. Jisung tried helplessly to unleash his powers but he couldn’t even manage a light breeze.

 

He was dried up.

 

Dammit. They truly were prepared for him. They knew _exactly_ how to stop him.

 

But who gave a fuck?

 

Powers or no powers, he could still kick ass. He wouldn’t rest until he saw Woojin. He told himself over and over again that he wouldn’t die until he could hold Woojin again. He had to go farther into the building. He wouldn’t be able to rest easy if he stopped now just because he was fucking _uncomfortable_.

 

“Woojin! Where are you? Fucking hell, dude.” Even his voice was getting thick and croaky in his throat. He could barely even swallow. If he got too hot, he wouldn’t be able to breathe at all.

 

He pushed open a set of swinging doors, walked down a narrow flight of concrete stairs and found himself inside of a room with a tiled floor. He didn’t know fuck all about hydroelectric plants so there was no telling what purpose a room like this served, but what he did know was that Woojin was here.

 

Right in front of him.

 

Naked and tied to the same chair he’d been strapped to in the grainy fucking video.

 

Exhaustion be damned.

 

Knife piercing his insides be damned.

 

Sweltering air making him feel like he’d swallowed desert sand be damned.

 

Jisung ran across the tile floor and all but fell across Woojin’s body in the chair.

 

He was breathing. He was alive. He was warm.

 

Thank fuck.

 

“Woojin,” he gasped, shaking the man. “Woojin, wake up. I’m getting you out of here. We’re going home.”

 

He tried to call on his powers but the air was too devoid of moisture. Jisung clawed at the ropes binding his boyfriend with his bare nails but the stubby, chewed-up things were nowhere near sharp enough to cut through the rope.

 

“Come on, Woojin,” Jisung half-whispered. He shook the man again and again, fiercer. “Get your lazy ass up or I’ll fucking dump you onto the floor.”

 

At long last, Woojin stirred. His hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat. Dark bags of exhaustion hung under his eyes. He looked through Jisung for several seconds before blinking and finding his focus. “Jiji,” he gasped. “You’re real. You’re here.”

 

Relief swept through Jisung. “God fucking dammit, you’re alive.” He returned his attention to the thick white ropes tying Woojin to the chair, to the complicated knots holding them all in place. If he wasn’t so _hot_ he could just create a tiny little ice pick and-

 

“You’ve arrived,” came a voice. “It has been a significant amount of time since I have last seen your face.”

 

Jisung turned around and squinted into the far corners of the room.

 

There. To his right.

 

A man with broad shoulders and a head of messy, bleached blonde hair. He wore an all-black uniform that contrasted with his pale skin and made him look nearly-sickly. He gave an off-putting smile and announced, “If it is any consolation, I was against taking a hostage.”

 

“Shut the fuck up, Chan,” Jisung growled.

 

“Master Han, I cannot follow your orders until I succeed in delivering you back to your family.”

 

Jisung snapped back, “Fuck my family.”

 

“We all just want you back home where you will be protected and cared for,” the man named Chan stated. There was something odd about the way the overhead lights reflected off his eyes. There was a glint there that hadn’t existed the last time Jisung saw him. Then again, the last time Jisung saw him, he was telling the butler to fuck off and suck his dick mere moments before he tossed his suitcases into the trunk of a taxi and ran away from home.

 

“I’m never going back,” Jisung screamed with all of his breath.

 

Chan began to slowly approach them. “Then I cannot follow your orders.” He held out his hand in what probably should have been a beseeching manner but only came off as threatening. “Please come with me, Master Han. I will take you home.”

 

“I’m not going back to that place,” Jisung said. “I’m not… marrying him.”

 

Chan tilted his head to the side as if he couldn’t understand such a concept. “Will you really forfeit your inheritance,” he hooked his eyes in Woojin’s direction, “...for him?”

 

“Yes,” Jisung said without hesitation.

 

“That is very sad,” Chan let him know.

 

Jisung pushed and pushed, straining himself to get even a breadcrumb of his powers going. There was nothing, though. He was completely spent. Even the ice he’d wrapped around his side as a makeshift splint had melted, leaving him with nothing but damp pants and the dull ache of the knife in his side.

 

“Use me,” Woojin whispered.

 

“But…” Jisung began.

 

Woojin shook his head. “Just enough to get us out of here.”

 

“Fine,” Jisung caved. He leaned down and pressed his dry mouth to Woojin’s damp, sweaty lips. Their kiss was wet and sloppy and consisted almost entirely of Woojin pushing his spit into Jisung’s mouth.

 

It was just barely enough.

 

Jisung stood up and used the new liquid in his mouth to forge a blade of ice. He raised his hand to his mouth and pinched the blade where he held it between his teeth. It was barely as long as his palm but it was sharp and that was the whole entire fucking point. He rushed forward, crossing the room.

 

Chan probably should have been afraid. “Will you really hurt me,” he asked, “after all of the years I’ve spent looking after you?”

 

After all of the years he got paid big bucks to look after him. “Yes, I will,” Jisung said. He raised his ice knife above his head and brought it down hard. The ice sliced right through two of Chan’s fingers and sent the digits bouncing across the tile floor with fleshy thwacks.

 

“I see,” said Chan, glancing down at his hacked-off stubs. He grunted with effort and then, like a lizard growing back its own tail, two new fingers began to push upwards from the bloody stumps.

 

Of all the things Jisung had seen in the past half hour, that was what made him pause and take a step back. “Holy fuck,” he whispered. Louder, he said to Chan, “what did you let them do to you?”

 

“I simply followed orders,” Chan said mechanically.

 

Jisung took another step back. He almost lost his grip on his ice knife, the only weapon he had left. “Did they make you like this just so you could try and catch me?”

 

Chan only repeated, “I simply followed orders.” He was close enough to grab Jisung now and he even reached out a hand to do it before Jisung found his wits and hopped backwards out of his reach.

 

“Well, I _don’t_ follow orders,” he said. “I’m not a mindless sheep letting someone else control me. I do whatever the hell I want to do and feel whatever the hell I want to feel!”

 

“Jisung,” Woojin choked. “We’ve gotta get out of here. You’re-” He coughed. “You’re bleeding.”

 

Jisung had forgotten that quickly. He furrowed his eyebrows in concentration and swung his ice knife in an upward arc.

 

It took Chan’s reaching hand clean off, sending it sailing through the air and hitting the far wall with a low, heavy thunk. Blood spilled out of Chan’s arm for a few brief seconds before a brand new hand grew back, red and damp and dripping like placenta.

 

“Just fucking die, Chan,” Jisung screamed, backing away in fright.

 

As if he couldn’t deviate too far from a predetermined script, Chan said, “I cannot follow your orders until I succeed in-”

 

“Shut the fuck up, Chan,” Jisung cut him off.

 

“I cannot follow your orders-”

 

“Jisung,” Woojin shouted. “Snap out of it. Can’t you see? He’s just fucking with you to give his reinforcements time to show.”

 

Jisung looked up at Chan and really, _really_ looked at him.

 

“Master Han,” Chan stated, “I only want- _We_ only want what’s best for you.” His eyes were gray and lifeless and dull. He was little more than a zombie.

 

Swallowing hard, Jisung muttered, “Really, Chan… What did you let them do to you?”

 

Chan just smiled blankly in his face before attempting to reach for him again.

 

“Jisung,” Woojin pleaded. “You’re melting. We don’t have time.”

  
Jisung snapped out of it. Woojin was right. Fuck his childhood. Fuck that massive, empty, loveless mansion. Fuck the sick and twisted parents that had turned him into _this_. The only thing he wanted to keep in his life was Woojin. And maybe Seungmin because he had a driver’s license. Jisung spun away from Chan’s reaching hands, ran up to where Woojin was tied to the chair and used what was left of his melting ice knife to hack through the knots in the rope until he had set his boyfriend free.


	4. Something Was Always Missing, But It Was Never You by Misery Signals

Pain was a salty ass, totally unforgiving bitch. Jisung was figuring that out the hard way.

 

If only pain could just fuck off, but no. That would be too much like right. Pain liked to _spread_ , impacting half of Jisung’s moving parts, slowing everything down like gum stuck in the gears of a machine. Pain did this weird thing where it eased off a bit to let him forget about it, then it waited for him to get comfortable just to rush him down like a stacked-as-fuck linebacker. Jisung felt flattened. Bowled over. And it pissed him off because he was used to doing the bowling over. Used to doing the flattening. He’d rather dish out pain than take it. He exhaled, “Goddammit this shit hurts.”

 

“Slow down,” Woojin breathlessly wheezed from a few paces behind him. He dragged his bare feet across the plant’s linoleum flooring. “I can’t… walk faster… than this.”

 

“Fucking shit,” Jisung growled. He always had to be slowed down by something! Jisung paused at the foot of the stairs and waited for the nude man to waddle up to him. “Move it!”

 

Woojin didn’t speed up. Or couldn’t.

 

Jisung peered past Woojin into the tiled-floored room. Chan stood there, surrounded by his own blood. His chopped off fingers still lay on the floor, looking like plump and bloody sausages. His hand still lay on the floor by the far wall. Little more than a chunk of meat and bones. By all means, Chan should have been wailing in pain and clutching his amputated appendage but he just stood there smiling. Fingers where he shouldn’t have fingers anymore. A hand where there hadn’t been. Couldn't have been. Chan took a step forward.

 

Jisung whirled back to Woojin, “Hurry the fuck up!”

 

Woojin narrowed his eyes, too used to Jisung’s yelling to be startled. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve _stood up_ ,” he shouted back. He reached where Jisung was standing and brushed past him to enter the stairwell. “It’s like I’m a fucking toddler. I can’t fucking walk!”

 

Jisung rolled his eyes in annoyance, “Jesus.”

 

“Fuck off,” Woojin snapped at him.

 

“No, _you_ fuck off!” Jisung yelled back.

 

“Go fuck yourself.”

 

“Just go, goddammit.” Jisung pointed towards the stairs.

 

Woojin put a hand on Jisung’s chest. Maybe it was supposed to be affectionate. Maybe it was supposed to be a very weak attempt at pushing Jisung away. Regardless, Woojin dropped his hand back to his side and kept walking.

 

Jisung pulled the stairwell door shut behind them and brushed past Woojin so that he was in front. “You meatbag,” he huffed.

 

“You sack of shit,” Woojin coughed.

 

Any other person would ask Woojin what the motherfuckers did to him in this place. Or ask how he managed to survive or what thought he clung to just to make it through the last few days without snapping. Perhaps ask if he needed to go to the hospital and rest. But… “Hurry the fuck up,” Jisung yelled from his position halfway up the stairs. “He’s probably right behind us, the bastard.”

 

Woojin didn’t say anything. He just looked up at Jisung with this completely fucking broken look on his face that made Jisung’s insides churn.

 

Jisung took a few steps down to meet Woojin halfway, then put his head under the man’s arm, got his hand around the man’s naked torso and did his best to half-carry him up the stairs. “Jesus fuck,” he complained as the weight reignited the pain in his stomach and side. It felt like he’d gotten hit by a car all over again. Numbness everywhere.

 

Woojin let out the tiniest chuckle. The absolute worst timing. Such joy sounded almost vulgar in the enclosed stairwell. “I actually stopped believing you’d come and get me, Jiji” he said.

 

It would have hurt less if Jisung had gotten punched in the throat. “You’ve got to be fucking joking.”

 

“After the first day or so, I just started thinking you’d finally had enough of me.”

 

“What the fuck?” Jisung shouted. He brought them to a halt on the stairwell landing. “Are you fucking serious, you fuckwad?” Why would Woojin ever think such a goddamn thing?

 

“I thought-” Woojin cut in before Jisung could really start yelling, “-that I’d finally gone too far.”

 

“Shut up,” Jisung warned him. He shook the man harshly, making him stumble. “I’ll always forgive you. No matter fucking what!”

 

Woojin shook his head. “Maybe that’s a bad thing.”

 

“What?” Jisung shrieked. “Woojin, what are you-” He was ready and willing to start an argument right there but they both heard the metal door at the bottom of the stairs squeal open.

 

Chan.

 

Jisung hissed out a, “Fuck!” He abandoned their discussion and got the two of them moving again. In their condition, it took them forever to get up the stairs. A fucking snail could have moved faster. Shit shit shit. Jisung glanced over the railing to see Chan staring up the stairwell right at him. Chan was always a bit creepy. Even back in the day, he had a wild knack for being wherever Jisung needed him to be. Sometimes before he even called the man’s name. This was different, though. Chan was Chan but he so clearly _wasn’t_ Chan. The blonde man’s soulless eyes followed their every movement as the two of them teetered their way up the stairs. Uselessly, Jisung yelled at him, “Go fucking die, Chan! Go play in traffic. Go throw yourself off a fucking bridge!”

 

In response to Jisung’s foul words, Chan just smiled. Very slowly. A doll imitating human expressions. Chan’s bright white teeth peeked out from between his pale pink lips. He didn’t move. He didn’t chase them. However, his presence right behind them on the stairs was still threatening. A brown bear waiting just outside the circle of light from a campfire. A threat unseen but a threat nonetheless.

 

“Jesus fuck!” Jisung tried to move a little faster but he felt like a car out of gas. His muscles barely moved him. Black spots danced in front of his fucking eyes and every breath of hot, dry air he sucked into his lungs felt like it would be his last. Life would be so much easier if he just sat the fuck down and let Chan take him home but Jisung had never been too big a fan of an easy life.

 

Jisung pushed forward. With everything that he had.

 

He’d rather push himself to the fucking brink than ease up for a _second_ and get thrown back into that motherfucking house! “Come the fuck _on_ , Woojin,” he grunted, opening the door at the top of the stairs and nearly hurling Woojin through it. “I know you’ve got more stamina than this.”

 

“Jisung, please…” Woojin begged. “Every part of my body hurts.”

 

“Same over here, but do you see that stopping me? Fucking hell. Man up!”

 

Woojin let out a pathetic whine as Jisung dragged him up the hall. “I can’t,” he choked. “Slow down. Please. I can’t even fucking see straight.”

 

Jisung spared him a sideways glance.

 

Woojin looked like shit.

 

Not the ‘waking up in bed with four hours of sleep and a hangover’ kinda shit. Not the kinda shit that was still hot and maybe deserving of a little wake up fuck. This was the ugly kind of shit. The kind that repulsed Jisung a little bit and made him think, just for one selfless second, about the absolute hell Woojin had to have endured while he was trapped down here.

 

“Just keep moving,” Jisung insisted.

 

Behind them, Chan came through the stairwell door.

 

Why hadn’t Chan caught them yet? He didn’t even have to fucking run. He just had to walk a little fast and he’d easily catch them but, instead, Chan just stood at the door, watching them and smiling like he was enjoying the chase. Like he knew he had them cornered and was waiting for the right moment. Jisung honestly would have preferred it if Chan was right on their asses but the butler purposefully staying so far back made goosebumps crawl up Jisung’s spine. What game was he playing at here? Was he herding them right into a trap?

 

“Slow… down,” Woojin croaked out for the millionth time. “Jiji… Fuck! My leg. My leg!”

 

“Fine, goddammit,” Jisung grunted. He stopped them in the middle of the hall and unwrapped himself from around the man’s torso.

 

Woojin couldn’t stand up on his own. He immediately fell over, barely managing to get his hands out beneath him before he hit the floor. He coughed and spit on the floor, shaking and sweating.

 

“You fucker,” Jisung spat at him. “Let’s just fucking stand here and wait. Let’s just let them catch up and take me away. Let’s just be separated forever.”

 

Woojin said nothing. He just fought to suck air into his lungs and weakly slapped his hand to his chest like he was having trouble breathing.

 

“I’m always looking out for you,” Jisung went on, “but you never fucking look out for me.”

 

At the very least, this made Woojin sit up and glare at him. He couldn’t hold the expression for long and his face contorted in pain before he devolved into another coughing fit.

 

Jisung rolled his eyes at such a fucking display of weakness. “I should fucking leave you here since you want to stay so goddamn bad.” He stepped up the hall, half-serious about abandoning the man and escaping alone.

 

“Jiji,” Woojin called after him meekly.

 

Even something like that made Jisung stop and turn back around. His frustration dissolved. The guilt clogged up his throat. He couldn’t do it. As tough as Jisung wanted to be, Woojin would always be able to turn him to putty. He didn’t even need to have a hand on Jisung’s dick to do it. “Fine. Come on. Christ!” Jisung stooped down and helped Woojin get back on his feet. Jisung really gave Woojin a once-over. _Really_ looked at him.

 

Woojin looked like a hollowed-out shell. His face was all gaunt like he hadn’t eaten in forever, dark bags hung under his eyes and his skin was waxy and covered in dirt smudges like he’d gone unwashed all of this time. He smelled a little. Borderline stank. No, he fucking _reeked_. His hair was knotted and greasy. There were bruises on him, Jisung noticed. Red markings where the ropes had kept him restrained. Purplish splotches on his thighs and arms and stomach that probably came from him struggling in the chair… or from getting beaten.

 

Jisung’s anger flared. How dare they treat his Woojin this way?

 

“I know you want to kill everyone,” Woojin said, as if able to sense Jisung’s rage, “but I’d rather go home.”

 

Fair.

 

It took a long moment, but Jisung banished his anger. “Fine,” he surrendered. “Let’s go.” Slowly and carefully, he started them down the hall again. Instead of dragging Woojin along after him, he made it a point to walk side by side with him. Togetherness or whatever the fuck. He was careful with his shoes, watching his every step so as not to tread on Woojin’s toes. He was easy with his hands, not pressing Woojin’s skin too hard out of some fear that he’d only add to Woojin’s numerous bruises.

 

Woojin let his head rest against Jisung’s shoulder.

 

Jisung felt the tiniest flutter of something light and brilliant in his chest.

 

Goddammit. He was just glad he got his Woojin back. It felt so good to be at his side again. To have his big ole arms draped over his shoulders again. They could honestly die right now and that would be fine because he was happy. “I fucked them up,” Jisung said suddenly. “I taught them a fucking lesson.” Now he felt a little giddy. Excited. A child retelling a fun day at school. “There were like fifty of the dudes and I killed them all. You should have seen me. It was so epic. I stabbed one guy in the eye with a knife. He couldn’t even scream. I probably hit his brain!”

 

“That’s nice,” Woojin grumbled, not particularly listening.

 

“I fucking stabbed one through the shoulder and then knocked another dude’s jaw off. Just fucking punched him in the head and watched his face split open. I told them not to fuck with me anymore,” Jisung continued, “so they better not fuck with me.” He’d done what he came here to do. He got Woojin back. He’d given his fuck ass family about twelve funerals to pay for. He’d done a good fucking job, all things considered. They’d sent him a message but he’d sent one right back. “They’re obviously fucking watching me if they thought to come after you in order to get to me… We’ll lay low for a couple days. Maybe stay over at Seungmin’s. Maybe even-”

 

“No. I’m going _home_ ,” Woojin corrected him. Maybe he _had_ been listening. He stood up straight and then used a great deal of his energy to step up his pace and pull Jisung forward this time. “I’m not going to fucking let them think I’m afraid.” There was more exhaustion in his voice than defiance, though. It sounded to Jisung like he just wanted to give up. Maybe let himself get caught next time. Woojin glanced over his shoulder to look at him. His red-rimmed eyes bored holes into Jisung’s skull. “If I run away now, I’ll just look like I’m fucking ashamed and I’m not ashamed of you.”

 

The tiniest pang reached Jisung’s brain. An emotion he was unfamiliar with. The feeling was completely foreign to him so he almost didn’t recognize it for what the fuck it was. Seconds passed before he identified the feeling: regret. It was thick like molasses but bitter like cough medicine. Jisung felt… _bad_ for Woojin. Not angry, but sad. A battery depleted. Woojin never would have gotten involved in all of this if-- “Fuck,” Jisung interrupted his own thoughts. He was so fucking weak. He was turning into a whiny, sensitive bitch! Ugh. So disgusting. Shit shit shit. He needed to get outside. He needed to fill his body with freezing cold again so that he could lock out all of these _emotions_. With that as his new motivation, Jisung pushed himself harder. They moved faster. If Woojin didn’t move fast enough for him, Jisung just dragged the dude down the hall behind him but he, too, was getting tired of this shit. He didn’t even bother screaming ‘hurry the fuck up’ anymore.

 

Being home sounded so good right then. For once, Jisung didn’t even want to fuck. Good as it would be. He just wanted to hold Woojin and be held by him. They didn’t even have to talk. God fucking dammit. If Woojin knew what the hell he was thinking right now! He was such a fucking freak!

 

He yanked Woojin through a set of double doors. “Stop dicking off,” Jisung grunted aloud. “We’ve gotta be almost out of here.”

 

Even though the layout of the hydroelectric plant was simple, Jisung still felt like he’d gotten turned around somewhere. Taken the wrong set of doors somehow. Everything looked the fucking same. It was all copied and pasted. An endless cycle of metal doors and empty corridors. The heat pumping from the fucking vents didn’t help. The hot air dried him out. Weighed him down. It made his vision get all wavy. How hot was it in here? His eyes were going to dry up in their fucking sockets. His brain was going to melt and drip out of his fucking ears!

 

“Turn left,” Woojin exhaled.

 

Jisung obeyed, moving on love and instinct. He’d follow Woojin off the side of a cliff if he asked.

 

“Through here,” Woojin instructed.

 

They had to combine their weakened strength just to swing the damn door at the end of the hall open.

 

Finally. Fucking finally, they had made it to the hydroelectric plant’s lobby.

 

It was actually kind of nice. The tile floors seemed freshly waxed. Jisung could sense the moisture in the thick clay pots of the exotic-looking plants. More importantly, though, their way out was unobstructed. It was honestly like spotting an oasis in the desert. The smashed-in front doors had drained the lobby of its excessive heat, leaving behind blizzard temperatures. The chill in the air was a relief. A panacea. Jisung caught a good, deep breath for what felt like the first time in ages. Even just that little bit was helping him numb the pain. He squeezed his eyes shut and used his powers to yank the arctic air closer to him. It swept into the building and spun around them briefly, brushing over his face and carding through his dyed blue hair. Already, Jisung felt more himself. Now… if he could get out _in_ the shit for real, he’d be complete again. If he could just swallow some snow, fucking drink in some ice, just get his body cold enough-

 

“Shit,” Woojin said through chattering teeth. He found the strength to wipe his sweat-damp hair out of his eyes. “I’m going to fucking pass out.”

 

“Don’t you dare,” Jisung told him. He snapped his eyes open. “At least not until we get outside.”

 

“Okay,” Woojin said and then suddenly went limp in Jisung’s arms.

 

Jisung wasn’t expecting it. The sudden deadweight almost sent them both tumbling to the floor. Jisung spread his legs wide and bent at the knees just to keep them standing upright. “Fuck,” he howled. Jisung dry heaved as a fresh wave of pain started in his side and then crawled all the way up his chest and into his throat like something moving and breathing inside his ribcage. “Fuck,” he hissed. “Fuck!”

 

“You okay?” Woojin croaked out. He could barely keep his eyes open.

 

Jisung let out a wordless scream of agony. It took some doing but he managed to get them both standing up properly again. The pain in his side made his vision dim at the corners. He wished he was in to pain. Like, _into_ it. Got off on it or something crazy like that. If pain turned him on, he’d be so fucking horny right now and the two of them would probably fuck right here with danger encroaching in on them from every side. That would be kinda hot, wouldn’t it? But instead, the pain just pissed Jisung off. It reminded him too viscerally that, despite his powers, he was only human. He wasn’t above pain. Jisung gritted his teeth and started shuffling forward, moving closer and closer to the doors.

 

At the very least, Woojin had found enough strength to at least partially contribute to their escape.

 

They were just two wounded dogs dragging each other to safety, blood and sweat dripping all over their skin.

 

But…

 

“I’m going to fucking freeze,” Woojin announced. His body went tense and he pulled back.

 

Shit. It had slipped Jisung’s mind. He had forgotten that other people… well… got cold. He eased them towards a vending machine and helped Woojin prop himself up against it. “Wear my coat.” Carefully, he maneuvered the ripped fabric over the handle of the knife and then raised the wooly material of the black coat up and over his head. The stretch reignited the pain in his side. “Fuck,” Jisung said for the ninth thousandth time. He hated himself for sounding so weak, for fucking _whimpering_ like a goddamn bitch, but he had a motherfucking combat knife sticking out of his abdomen for fuck’s sake! “Every time I fucking move…” His words barely got through his clenched teeth. He pulled the coat up over his head, too disoriented to notice that he’d pulled his mask off along with it. The black surgeon’s mask fell to the floor between his shoes but he would never see it. “Every fucking breath I take, I-” He couldn’t even get the rest of the sentence out as the ache throbbed through him again. The pain seemed to pulse in waves, keeping pace with his fucking heartbeat. Holy hell. Jisung wanted to do something cool like the action heroes in movies and just grab the knife and yank it out but--shit!--he’d tried that already and that’s _not_ how shit worked. It was like the knife had grown hands and was fucking grabbing his insides, not letting go. “Shit!”

 

“If you’re this talkative, you’re okay,” Woojin said, attempting to smile.

 

Jisung pressed his coat into Woojin’s bare arms but he was smiling, too. “Fuck you.”

 

Woojin pulled himself into the coat. Getting his arms through the appropriate sleeves took only the bare minimum of struggling. Fortunately, Jisung had bought it a size or two too large for him, which meant it fit Woojin near-perfectly. He pulled the sleeves up over his hands and then tried his best to pull the bottom hem down over his round ass cheeks, down over his low-hanging balls. It didn’t quite work. He’d have to fucking deal. “Look at you,” he said, waggling a finger towards Jisung’s side.

 

Jisung followed where he was pointing to stare at the handle of the knife jutting out of his side. His shirt, it had been white at some point this morning, was stained almost black with the amount of blood he’d lost.

 

Another piece of clothing he’d have to discard after only wearing it once.

 

“Does it hurt,” Woojin asked.

 

“Of course it fucking hurts, dickface,” Jisung said. “It’s probably inside my fucking pancreas or something. God-fucking-dammit.”

 

Woojin bit his bottom lip and looked away. The gory sight must have upset him.

 

“Let’s go,” Jisung said. “We’ve wasted enough time.”

 

Woojin turned his eyes towards the thick white snow drifting down from the sky and piling up knee-deep outside the hydroelectric plant’s front doors. “I’m gonna freeze my fucking feet off.”

 

“For fuck’s sake! All you do is beg!” Jisung stooped down to peel off his new kicks. “You selfish asshole. Stop holding us up. It’s every five seconds with you.” He threw the sneakers at Woojin’s head, barely missing. The white shoes bounced off the front of the vending machine with a loud pair of thuds but Woojin wasted no time snatching them up off of the floor and cramming his bare feet inside them.

 

It finally seemed like he was ready to go. “I feel ridiculous.”

 

“Who the fuck cares. No one is going to see you.”

 

Woojin glanced up in Jisung’s direction and would have looked away if he hadn’t seen Jisung’s face without his mask.

 

Jisung misinterpreted the look of surprise on his face. “What do you want from me now?” He yelled in frustration. “Come on!” To prevent further delays, Jisung grabbed Woojin by the wrist and yanked him towards the outdoors and the howling, freezing wind.

 

Jisung’s sock feet sank into the snow but getting that much closer to the cold probably helped.

 

Over the wind, Woojin shouted, “Which way are we going?”

 

“Give me a second,” Jisung said. He reached out with his powers. It was like stretching first thing in the morning. Feeling all of his muscles pull taut. Feeling all of his bones creak and pop. With just a little bit of effort, he put a stop to the wind. Then, pushing a little harder, he put a stop to the snow.

 

The air began to clear.

 

“That way,” Jisung said, pointing to the tall, chain link fence that surrounded the place. “Towards the road.”

 

The two of them trudged through the snow in the indicated direction. Each step brought Jisung closer and closer to his old self.

 

Already, his body temperature was dropping. He was no longer melting. He was water refreezing. Jisung pulled the cold into his body. He felt the chill race into his blood. He felt it settle in his lungs and stomach. He was numb just the way he liked. “Finally,” he breathed out. “Finally, finally!” It was like finding an old favorite shirt that still fit. It was like coming home after a long day, swinging open the fridge door and seeing that the box of cake you put your name on was still there, untouched. It was like a good wank session after a long, stressful day; jizz pooling on the bed sheets as you got comfortable for a nap.

 

It felt nice. Comfortable. Jisung pulled even more of the cold inside of his body, pushing it into all of his corners, making sure to pack it in deep in his fingers and toes. He never wanted to get that hot and sweaty again. He never wanted to come that close to falling apart again.

 

“Fucking shit,” he mumbled in pleasure, his eyes fluttering closed.

 

It took only a portion of his power to knit his torn skin back together. To put the ripped up pieces of his insides back in place.

 

Pain swooped low through him. Dizzying. Like he was trying to push a kidney stone through the tip of his dick. The knife in his side fell out of his body and hit the snow as his stomach repaired itself, leaving not so much as a scar behind.

 

“Jisung,” Woojin shouted in a panic, breaking his concentration.

 

Jisung blinked away the euphoria of relief and turned to look at the man.

 

Woojin said nothing. He just jerked his head towards his arm.

 

Jisung followed his gaze. The place where he was gripping Woojin’s wrist was starting to turn blue beneath his fingers. Ice had formed in the hair on Woojin’s arm. Jisung let him go. “Should have said something earlier,” he snapped.

 

 _You could hurt Woojin just like you’ll hurt the rest of them._ Seungmin’s words echoed in his head but Jisung shook the haunting thought away.

 

“Did you do all of this,” Woojin asked in a tightly-wound voice. He waved an arm around them.

 

Jisung glanced to his left and to his right. All around them, the corpses of the mercenaries littered the snow. Bright red blood pooled across the lily white snow in stark, nightmarish contrast. Some of the bodies lay in brutal pieces. An arm here, a leg there. Other bodies were more… intact, save for the holes in them caused by either ice or the stray bullets of friendly fire. Jisung could smell the rot of death in the air. He breathed it in, held it and then let it out like it was smoke he could get high off of. “I did it for you,” he finally stated.

 

An odd expression came over Woojin’s face but he eventually started walking again.

 

Jisung squatted down, picked the combat knife up off the ground and wiped the blade off in his grimy shirt. He stood up and rushed after Woojin, holding the blade up towards the man’s face. “You like knives,” he stated. “You like this?”

 

“Jisung,” Woojin said with a frown. Snowflakes had settled in his hair and across his shoulders. Jisung wasn’t touching him but his face was a little pale. His lips were a little blue. His eyes were a little unfocused. If anything, being out in the cold was making things worse for him instead of making things better like it was for Jisung. “You just pushed that thing out of your body like it was a fat shit. I don’t want to touch it.”

 

“I’ll keep it, then,” Jisung decided. Woojin was the knife collector but this one… this one was pretty enough to keep. This one was _his_ . Jisung stared down at the knife’s serrated edge. At his blood coagulating in the grooves. Unlike the kitchen knife that dude off the street had tried to threaten him with, this thing _looked_ sharp. It looked like it could carve through skin like butter. Jisung was actually a little afraid to hold it. Even by its handle. He grinned. “I’ll name her Squirrel.”

 

Woojin let out one sharp ‘ha’ of a laugh. “That’s an awful name for a knife.” He got a few steps ahead.

 

“That’s the point,” replied Jisung, still distracted by the gleam of the metal in the few places he could see the shine beneath his own caked-on blood. “The less fitting the name, the better. No one will suspect anything. They’ll put down their guard.”

 

“It’s a fucking knife. No one will let down their guard whether you name it Killer or Tinkerbell.”

 

Maybe. Jisung wasn’t so sure.

 

Their conversation died out. Neither of them were in the mood to speak even though they had days of shit worth talking about.

 

“Hey, Woojin,” Jisung said after a while.

 

“What the hell do you want?”

 

“I missed you.”

 

Woojin stopped walking. So suddenly that Jisung nearly ran straight into his back. The man turned around to face him. “Thank fuck,” he whispered, sounding relieved. “I missed you, too.” He threw an arm around Jisung’s shoulder, drew the shorter man close and kissed him on the mouth. Unlike downstairs in the plant, this kiss wasn’t about survival. It was about love. Or something wickedly close to it. Something trying very hard to masquerade as love. Their tongues touched. Warm against cold. Jisung leaned forward, pushing more firmly against Woojin’s body, desperately clawing a hand under his own coat, pressing his fingers to Woojin’s bare skin. Woojin pulled away, gasping. “Freezing,” he squeaked out and then turned away with a brand new urgency in his steps.

 

Jisung clenched his hand into a fist at his side and watched as Woojin walked away. Right. There was _that_. Woojin would never let him forget it.

 

“Let’s try and find a gate,” Woojin said, approaching the fence.

 

Jisung frowned. “I can just cut through it.” He jogged to catch up.

 

“That works, too.”

 

Jisung froze the moisture in the air into the shape of a large, sharp blade and used it to effortlessly saw through the metal. He had just managed to peel the halves of the fence back so that they could crawl through the hole when Seungmin’s shit-colored car rolled up to the curb in front of them belching noise and smoke. The majority of the ice on the windshield and windows had been scraped off. It had probably taken a shit ton of effort. Jisung commended him for it.

 

Seungmin rolled down the driver’s side window and stuck his head out into the frigid air. “Fuck, what the hell happened to you? There’s blood all over you.”

 

“Only some of it is mine,” Jisung said, as if making that distinction helped the matter.

 

“Woojin, you’re turning blue. Let’s get you warmed up.” Seungmin flung open the car door and got out, scrambling to get the back door unlocked and open. “Shit, is that your penis? Sorry for looking.”

 

“Sorry,” Woojin said, shimmying through the opening in the fence. “I didn’t get a complimentary bathrobe. Didn’t have enough points on the timeshare.”

 

“Let’s just get out of here, Seungmin,” Jisung snapped. “Your car’s a piece of shit but it’s the one thing you’ve got going for you.” Jisung was feeling much better now that he had full access to his powers again but that didn’t change the fact that he still felt physically exhausted after exerting himself so much. He just wanted to get home. “Now aren’t you glad I kept you out of this shit? You wouldn’t have lived.”

 

Seungmin spun towards him and gasped. “What the fuck?”

 

“I told you I didn’t need your goddamn help,” Jisung explained. “I told you I could do this on my own if you stayed the fuck out of the way.”

 

“I’m not talking about you, I’m talking about him,” Seungmin pointed.

 

Or, at first, Jisung _thought_ Seungmin was pointing at him.

 

Moving without thinking, Jisung shoved Woojin the rest of the way through the opening in the fence, not even caring that he’d knocked the man face first into the snow. Jisung whirled around, coming almost face to face with Chan. “Fucking shit,” he exclaimed, definitely not expecting the man to have been able to get right up on him without him sensing it. “Step off, Chan!” He shoved the man in the chest to give himself some breathing room.

 

Chan took a few steps back but regained his footing.

 

“Who is that,” Seungmin squealed from somewhere behind him.

 

“An old friend,” Jisung shouted back, not wanting to risk taking his eyes off of Chan.

 

“An old friend,” Chan repeated. “I’m touched.” The fact that he seemed completely serious about the remark instead of turning it into sarcasm made Jisung squirm. “Master Han, please-”

 

“Don’t call me that,” Jisung snapped. “I don’t want to be a part of that family.”

 

“Master Han,” Chan repeated, uncaring, “please come home. Your parents are worried.”

 

“No they aren’t. They don’t give two flying fucks.”

 

Chan smiled but the lightness of it did not reach his eyes. “Of course they do. As you can see-” He waved a hand over his shoulder to indicate the numerous bodies spread across the snow behind him, “-they will go to any length and pay any cost to be reunited with you.”

 

Or, more accurately, to be reunited with the aberration they had turned him into. “Shut the fuck up,” Jisung yelled. God, he even fucking hated the way Chan _talked_. He sounded like he gave two shits, he sounded like he cared, but did he? Really? “Just leave me the fuck alone, Chan. Go away and never come the fuck back.”

 

“As I keep telling you, I cannot follow your orders until you come back home.” Chan took a step forward.

 

Jisung tensed at his approach. “If I told you to stick this knife up your goddamn asshole, would you do it,” Jisung asked, holding the combat knife up in front of him to keep Chan from taking another step closer.

 

Chan did not hesitate. “Only if you came back home.”

 

The look in his eyes made it clear that he was out of his mind enough to actually do it.

 

“Anything to make you happy,” Chan added.

 

Fuck. That just made it worse. “Never seeing your fucking face again would make me happy,” Jisung shouted. “You leaving me alone would make me happy.”

 

Such information didn’t seem to click in Chan’s head. He opened his eyes wide, closed them, and opened them again in a hideous facsimile of blinking. “If you come back to the house, I will leave you alone forever.”

 

Jisung felt his chest tighten. If anything, Chan was the one member of the household he would want to keep around if he ever had to return to that shithole of a place.

 

There was a noise behind him. Jisung spared a glance over his shoulder just in time to see Seungmin hoist Woojin into the backseat of his car and swing the door shut. Jisung had bought enough time.

 

Good.

 

He looked back at Chan. “Tell my parents to go fuck themselves. I don’t give a shit. Not about them. Not about you. Just go away and let me live my fucking life.”

 

“I can’t do that,” Chan said. “My only purpose is to bring you back to the Han mansion safe and sound.”

 

Jisung let his powers go. The temperature of the air around them sank dramatically. Ice coated the fence and made the beads of sweat on Chan’s forehead freeze.

 

Seungmin shouted, “Please, Jisung.” He sounded dangerously close.

 

Jisung glanced over his shoulder to see the man standing right behind him. “You can’t run away from your problems forever. Maybe if you just talk to this guy, maybe if you just negotiated with your parents, you can reach some kind of agree-”

 

Chan grabbed Jisung’s arm.

 

Jisung snapped. He just… lost control over the movements of his own body for a moment. He lashed out with his powers. He swung Squirrel, his new knife, with all of his strength.

 

Then there was quiet. Stillness.

 

Everything settled back into place.

 

“What?” Seungmin squeaked out, unsure of what had just happened.

 

“I see.” Chan’s eyes went wide and he smiled, genuinely impressed with how strong Jisung had gotten, with how remorseless he’d become. “I can’t stop, you know” he said, almost managing to sound emotional about it. “I can only do what I am told until I am told to do something else.” Then a line of bright, bright red opened up from one end of his neck to the other. Blood gushed out. So hot that it steamed. It went everywhere, getting all over the snow and spraying in chaotic patterns over Jisung’s pants. Over his shirt. Over his face.

 

Some of it sprayed Seungmin, getting into his eyes. He shrieked high and loud then backed away rapidly, wiping at his face and retching.

 

Jisung yanked his arm free of the butler’s grasp.

 

Chan’s head went left. His body went right. Both pieces of him fell into the snow, unmoving.

 

“Holy fucking shit,” Seungmin screamed at the top of his lungs. He put his hands on Jisung’s shoulders suddenly. Too suddenly.

 

Jisung whirled on him and nearly took off his head, too. He stopped with the knife in his hand a hair’s width away from Seungmin’s throat before regaining control of himself.

 

For once, for fucking _once_ , Seungmin did not flinch. But perhaps because his head was too clouded by fear. “Why would you do that,” he asked, gulping. “Don’t you know him?”

 

“Does it fucking matter?” Jisung shoved Seungmin away.

 

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” Seungmin wailed. He rushed forward and knelt in the snow. “Are you okay?” He asked Chan’s decapitated body helplessly. “Oh my God, are you alright?” He shook the man’s body, probably unable to process the fact that the man’s head lay in the snow quite some distance away.

 

“Are you fucking stupid,” Jisung asked the man. He grabbed a handful of Seungmin’s hair and yanked and yanked until the man got to his feet. “Get in the car.”

 

“But-” Seungmin started.

 

“I said get in the car,” Jisung hissed, raising the knife in his hand.

 

Seungmin’s voice went shrill with panic. His brain only just starting to catch up. “Are you fucking serious? You’re just… You just chopped his fucking head off!”

 

Jisung groaned with impatience. His hand still in Seungmin’s hair, he dragged the man towards the hole in the fence and legitimately kicked the man through to the other side.

 

“Holy shit, holy shit,” Seungmin pressed his hands to either side of his face. “Holy shit! Do you do that kind of shit to _everyone_?”

 

Jisung crawled through the fence. “This is why I told you to stay home. Because I knew you’d act like this. Move it, Seungmin! Fucking hell.”

 

The man was still in the throes of shock. His mouth hung open, his eyes were wide. He pulled on his hair like he wanted to tear the strands straight out of his fucking skull. “He was just trying to help you,” he cried out.

 

“By taking me back to those monsters?” Jisung shook his head, scoffing at the very idea. “Maybe if his dick was bigger.”

 

Seungmin was visibly starting to shake. “Jesus fuck.”

 

Jisung walked around the hood of the ancient, rattling car and swung open the passenger door. “Can we go? I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten since lunch.”

 

“Jisung!” Seungmin chastised. “How does this not fucking bother you at all?” He looked like he was one moment away from vomiting. “For fuck’s sake!” He let out a high-pitched, humorless laugh. “Don’t mind me. I definitely don’t need therapy or anything.”

 

Jisung rolled his eyes. “Do you want me to drive?”

 

Belatedly, Seungmin dry heaved. He bent over at the waist and clutched his stomach but, thank fuck, nothing came out. He wiped at his mouth. “No. No. I’m good. I’ll drive. Jesus wept.” He peered through the fence.

 

Blood was still weakly spurting out of Chan’s severed neck. The red that seeped out of him clumped and pooled in the footprints Jisung had left in the snow. Chan’s head was facing their general direction. The lips twitched the slightest bit.

 

Seungmin bent back over and dry heaved again. When the surge eased, Seungmin screamed, “Fucking shit! Holy shit.”

 

Jisung sank down into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut.

 

“Get the fuck in the car, Seungmin, and stop acting like a goddamn bitch.” The words sounded like something Jisung would say, but the voice belonged to Woojin.

 

“My God from Zion,” Seungmin exhaled. Trembling like a leaf, he approached the car and sat down in the driver’s seat. He almost forgot to shut the door. He put his shaking hands on the gear shift and put the car in first gear. Tears of fright had sprang to his eyes. “Shit shit shit.” He nearly stalled the car by not taking his foot off the clutch fast enough.

 

“Move it, Seungmin,” Jisung yelled, slamming his fist on the dashboard.

 

The noise made Seungmin squeeze his eyes shut. “Shit shit shit,” he whispered to himself. He opened his eyes and his tears spilled down his cheeks freely. He pushed his foot down on the gas pedal. This time, he got the car moving forward, swinging the steering wheel tight to the right to initiate a three-point turn and aim them downhill.

 

As they drove away, Jisung leaned his upper body out of the open window and squinted into the night just in time to watch a headless Chan push himself to his feet.


	5. Anxiety by If I Were You

The drive down the dark and snowy mountain road was quiet. To hell with that. It was _plenty_ fucking noisy. Except none of the boys were speaking. None of them needed to. Or wanted to. Or could. Seungmin’s shitty old sedan kept up enough noise for all three of them and then some, so even if they did want to talk, even if there was something worth talking about, they’d have to compete with the goddamn car screaming with effort every time Seungmin put his foot on the gas. And it made all that noise for nothing! It’s not like she was going anywhere. Seungmin was too chickenshit to put too much speed on her which was awful because not only could Jisung probably sprint faster than this but every minute that passed had Woojin looking more and more like a decomposing corpse sprawled out on the back seat. Seungmin eased the car around a curve and then, when the road straightened out again, he sped up. Barely. The car’s muffler belched black smoke as the engine roared. Jisung couldn’t stand this kind of noise. There was no tempo to it. No fucking personality. It was just mindless buzzing. Cicadas shrieking. Jisung couldn’t even hear himself think over the constant droning of the ancient vehicle. He needed his tunes to drown this shit out but his phone was fucking dead! He rummaged around in Seungmin’s glove compartment, shoving aside fast food restaurant coupons, condom wrappers and empty gummy bear bags until he found the car charger Seungmin always left there for him. He plugged one end into his phone and jammed the other end into the cigarette lighter.

 

He held down the power button on his phone.

 

Nothing fucking happened.

 

“Come on, you goddamn piece of shit,” he growled at it. Despite his words, he was actually calm. Panic hadn’t hit him yet.

 

“Do you think they’ll chase us,” Seungmin asked in a squeaky, nervous voice. “Do you think they’ll ambush the car?”

 

Snorting, Jisung declared, “Like hell they would. They’ve got no one left to fucking ambush us _with_.” He’d personally seen to that. Well, Chan was still back there. Walking around without a goddamn head. Somehow. Jisung didn’t want to think about it. “They want me alive so shut up and drive.”

 

They stopped talking.

 

The car rumbled over a stone bridge and below them the big river surged past. Minutes later and they were down the side of the mountain and among the foothills. The snow-covered trees along the side of the road were beginning to thin and, when the angle was good, it was possible to peer through the evergreen branches and see the orange and blue lights of the big city. Jisung just wanted to be home but there was probably still a half hour drive between them and their apartment. He wouldn’t be able to make it without firing up his playlist. He was a fucking coke fiend literally shaking and squirming, dying to hit the next line.

 

Why wouldn’t his phone start up?

 

Jisung smacked it a few times. Tapped the screen like his life depending on it. Then he flipped it over and pressed on the back of it rhythmically like he was performing CPR. When that didn’t help, he struck the corner of the phone against the door handle. Anything to revive the goddamn thing because wasn’t hitting it supposed to _help_?

 

The screen of his phone stayed black. He unplugged it and plugged it back in.

 

Jack shit.

 

Fuck. Fuck! Now the anxiety was creeping in. He couldn’t lose his phone. He couldn’t lose his tunes! He would actually fucking die if he didn’t have his music.

 

“Please, please, please,” Jisung begged the device. “You can’t be dead.” He wouldn’t be able to last another fucking minute like this, without his ears being assaulted by a sick ass breakdown or a wild as fuck guitar solo. It had already been too long. He switched shit up a bit and rubbed his phone gently--almost tenderly--attempting to warm it up beneath his frigid fingertips.

 

He held down the power button again.

 

No response.

 

“Shit.” Now he was upset. A stress headache chewed at the back of his skull, behind his right ear. Jisung lost his grip on his powers. He could feel it ooze out of him cold and slick. Outside, it began to sleet.

 

Visibility plummeted. Seungmin spun up the windshield wipers. Then turned them up faster when they barely helped. “Hey, chill out,” he hissed but then he immediately lost his spine and shrank into his seat. “Sorry for the shit pun.”

 

Jisung didn’t even hear him. He was a king and what were the complaints of a mere peasant to a king? Let them fucking eat cake.

 

“Jiji,” Woojin said. He leaned forward in his seat and clamped his hand down on Jisung’s shoulder, digging his fingernails into the cotton of Jisung’s blood-soaked shirt. Woojin said nothing else. He didn’t need to. Just that little bit of physical contact was enough.

 

Jisung relaxed. The sleet let up.

 

The road in front of them became visible again in the headlights. Seungmin eased just a little bit more pressure on the gas and they sped up by the tiniest fucking smidgen.

 

Positive that disaster had been averted, however temporarily, Woojin released his grip on Jisung and leaned back in his seat.

 

Jisung tried the power button on his phone again. Still nothing. Was his phone shit or was Seungmin’s bootleg car charger shit? He couldn’t even tell! Jisung glanced out the window and stared up at the dark night sky. He bargained, “God, if you’re listening, don’t let my fucking phone die. I swear, I’ll be a good person! I’ll change.”

 

Woojin laughed his amusement. “Like you fucking could.”

 

“I _can_ ,” Jisung raised his voice.

 

“I’d like to see it,” Seungmin joined in.

 

“Shut your fucking ass up,” Jisung snarled at him.

 

Seungmin stiffened and went quiet.

 

Jisung spoke to Woojin. “I’m being honest. I’ll do anything if this shit starts working again.”

 

Woojin didn’t believe it. He had no fucking reason to. “You’d never.”

 

Jisung held down the power button for what felt like the millionth fucking time. “If God could just do this one thing for me, I’ll-”

 

The screen of his phone lit up. It was finally powering on.

 

Woojin saw it. “You going to be a good church boy now?”

 

“Hell to the fuck no,” Jisung said with a wild grin. He pointed a middle finger at the sky. “There is no God.” As soon as his phone started up, he swiped through the screens and opened up his music app, ready to plug in his Beats and allow the rest of the world to crumble away.

 

But-

 

“Jesus fuck,” Seungmin screeched out of nowhere. “You took his head clean off! It went rolling in the goddamn snow like a bowling ball.”

 

“What?” Jisung didn’t even spare him a glance. “You’re still fucking thinking about that?” He’d put it out of his mind. He wouldn’t even classify it as a memory.

 

Seungmin wailed, “And you’re _not_ ? Christ!” His voice was shaky. He was sweating bullets even though he’d turned the heat in the car down. He held the steering wheel in a white-knuckle grip but that didn’t hide how much his hands were starting to tremble. It was probably a fucking miracle he hadn’t steered them straight through the guardrail by now. “How can you just do some shit like that and be fucking fine afterwards? How can you _kill_ people but only be worried about your motherfucking phone?”

 

Jisung let the question sit in his head for a fraction of a second. “You could be the last bitch on this earth and I still wouldn’t put my dick in your mouth.”

 

That caught Seungmin so off-guard he nearly _did_ drive them through the guardrail. “What? Hello?” He jerked the steering wheel to the left to get the car back in the center of the lane. “How is that even-” He stared into the rearview mirror at Woojin in a wide-eyed panic. When Woojin didn’t even bat an eyelash, Seungmin turned his attention back to Jisung. “How the fuck is that an answer to my question?”

 

Would he ever _shut up_? “You’re such a loser, Kim Seungmin,” Jisung exploded. “Just constant whining! I can’t stand people like you. Why do we even hang out?” Oh yeah. Because of Seungmin’s superb internet connection and his unlimited data plan. Finally, Jisung looked in Seungmin’s direction. He took in the man’s tangled hair and scruffy, shitty mustache. He nearly laughed at how mask-like the facial hair looked on the guy. Comedic. Like it was glued on. Seungmin would probably always look and act like a goddamn baby. Jisung said, “I’ve always imagined you as a Ken doll. Do you even have a penis to fuck bitches with?”

 

“What?” Seungmin sputtered out. The wild switches in topic were throwing him for a roller coaster loop. He stared at Jisung as if trying to gauge how serious of an inquiry that was. He met Jisung’s freezing stare for half a breath before looking away. “Uhhh… Yes! Hello. I’ve got one. It’s big.”

 

That was only something a tiny-dicked motherfucker would say. “Yeah right,” Jisung snorted.

 

Seungmin got red in the face. He practically wheezed out, “You don’t know that!”

 

“Are you offering to show it to me,” asked Jisung. He was joking. Anyone who heard him would have known, but Seungmin’s face brightened further. Nearly going purple with humiliation. Jisung almost laughed at his pitiful response. “You couldn’t handle me anyway.” Plus, he’d never cheat on Woojin the way Woojin cheated on him. He turned his attention out the passenger window. The suburbs were just ahead of them now and, a ways farther, the skyscrapers of downtown. The mountain was a black shadow behind them. Home was a little bit closer now. “I don’t even think of you as a person,” he told Seungmin. More like an inanimate object that talked. Constantly.

 

Seungmin’s mouth fell open in shock. That was thrice Jisung had sent his head reeling in one conversation. He took his eyes off the road to stare at Jisung, even more jittery and manic than before. “What are you even saying to me?”

 

Really honestly truly seriously, how the _fuck_ did the two of them become friends? Seungmin was the exact kind of dude Jisung hated so how the hell did they manage to spend this much time together? Jisung cast around in his head for an idea of how they met. Did Jeongin introduce them to each other? Shit. Jeongin wouldn’t do something so heartless. Jisung really tried to think! The last several months were such a blur to him, full of sex and anger and drinking and clubbing and destroying and fighting and sex and sex and sex. Seungmin had just… showed up. Somewhere in that same brief window of time that Jisung had parasitically attached himself to Woojin’s side. At least he remembered _that_ clearly. Giving up on trying to figure shit out, Jisung mumbled, “I’m saying that I don’t give two flying shits about you and I kind of wish you’d fuck off forever.”

 

In the back seat, Woojin let out a bored sigh. “Are you two done?”

 

“None of them are people to me,” explained Jisung, finally answering Seungmin’s initial question. “Those cunts back at the plant. Chan, even. The fuckers who call themselves my parents. The bitch they want me to marry. Shit. They aren’t _people_ so who the fuck cares what I do to them?”

 

“Goddammit, there’s still such a thing as decency, Jisung,” Seungmin cried out. “I know you’ve been hurt but you can’t take that out on other people when-”

 

“Are you fucking serious?” Jisung’s eyes went wide. Anger boiled up in him rapidly, threatening to overflow. He gripped the sides of his seat just to keep himself from putting Seungmin’s head through the window. “Shut up. You don’t fucking know me, you shitstain. I was fucked up _before_ the syringes!” The only thing keeping him from yelling even more was how tightly his throat wound up, like he was about to vomit. How could Seungmin be so smart yet be so fucking stupid? “Whatever,” groaned Jisung. He made himself unclench his hands and relax his shoulders. “My parents turned me into a monster. May as well act like one.” He needed his music. If he didn’t drown out Seungmin’s bitch ass voice right this second, Jisung would rip the man’s tongue out through his neck.

 

But neither he nor Woojin knew how to fucking drive.

 

Shit. They still needed him.

 

Where was his phone?

 

There. On the seat between his knees. He made a grab for it. It was still charging, thank fuck. He went back to the music app and found the album that he was looking for. He scrolled down the list of songs and pressed play on his fave.

 

Distorted guitar rushed out of his Beats hanging around his neck. The sound wasn’t being directed straight into his eardrums like he needed but the guitar riff dipped low and sour enough to cut through the noise of Seungmin’s car engine and relieve a smidgen of Jisung’s uneasiness. Finally, some noise with a pulse! Some sound with life!

 

The vocalist angrily screamed at him, _the taste of fear is so bitter on my tongue_.

 

Under his breath, Seungmin muttered, “Jesus, how do you stand that-”

 

“I wouldn’t finish that thought,” Woojin warned.

 

Seungmin clamped his mouth shut.

 

Jisung closed his eyes and let the chaos of the song seep into his skin.

 

_A familiar feeling, so hard to break free._

 

Hold up! Jisung twisted around in his chair to look at Woojin in the back seat.

 

The man looked haggard and a moment away from falling the fuck asleep but there was something about such a tired and bloodied-up look that stoked the fire in Jisung’s groin. A switch in his brain had been flipped. He missed Woojin, he realized, and they’d been reunited for ages now and they’d barely even looked at each other in their mad dash to get away from that scorching hell. But now… Jisung looked the man up and down. God, Woojin was so _hot_ . Jisung almost couldn’t stand it. The way his sweat-damp hair curled and curled, framing his square and handsome face. His lips looked a little swollen and there was a touch of dried blood in the corners. His jawline was sharp enough to cut stone and his half-lidded eyes could get a rise out of anyone. He could get anything and anyone he wanted with that face. He looked so soft. So _good_. Not in a tasty way but in a perfect, non-evil way. Yet Jisung knew how corrupt Woojin was beneath the surface. Jisung wanted a taste of that sin. It didn’t help that his black, wooly coat barely covered Woojin’s thick torso and left the rest of him free to be gawked at. Without shame, Jisung hungrily stared at the man’s flaccid, pink-tipped dick until the greatest idea hit him.

 

“Let’s fuck,” Jisung announced, bringing his eyes up to Woojin’s face.

 

Woojin, who had been staring out of the window, shifted nothing but his dark eyes in order to meet Jisung’s gaze.

 

That was all Jisung needed. He attempted to get into the back seat only to find himself restrained. He unbuckled his seatbelt and went for it again, crawling between the passenger and driver seats to get to the back. In his haste to get laid, he elbowed Seungmin in the side of his head, making the dude swerve and cuss.

 

Seungmin straightened the car out on the road. Thank fuck no one else was driving out here in the suburbs at this time of night. “Fucking hell, Jisung,” Seungmin yelled. “You could have killed us!”

 

“Go fuck yourself,” Jisung snapped. He wedged himself between the seats and reached out a hand desperately for Woojin’s dick. He barely reached the man’s knee. He had to get closer. He lifted a leg, kicking Seungmin’s side in the process.

 

“Hold up,” Seungmin gasped. “Are you two serious?”

 

“As a goddamn heart attack,” Jisung answered. He reached out a hand and curled his fingers around Woojin’s dick.

 

Seungmin braked hard, bringing the car to a dead stop in the middle of some quiet residential street. Jisung was thrown backwards. Away from his boyfriend. He tumbled over the gear shift. He even hit his head on the dashboard. With a rare display of bravery, Seungmin said, “You’re not going to fucking _fuck_ in my fucking car.” Jisung tried to sit up but Seungmin took a hand off the wheel and caught a fistful of Jisung’s bloody shirt collar. He shook Jisung harshly. “I’m not going to fucking watch you two fuck in my car!” He was so pissed that spit flew from his mouth and decorated Jisung’s neck and chin.

 

Jisung looked up at him. The ball of slime had grown a spine. Finally. He almost felt threatened. “I can do whatever the hell I-”

 

“Not in my car!”

 

Of course, such a blatant denial of his pleasure made Jisung want to catch a nut that much harder. “Hands off,” he growled. He shoved his palm into Seungmin’s face. Not only did he knock the man’s glasses off his nose, Jisung also succeeded in getting Seungmin to unhand him. “Just drive, shitbag. I don’t need your permission for anything.” Freed from Seungmin’s clutches, Jisung pounced forward, climbed between the seats and deposited himself on Woojin’s lap. Being this close up on Woojin was like riding the thigh of some Renaissance sculpture. Skin on priceless marble. Sacreligious. “Damn, you’re fine.” He whistled like he was catcalling some chick on the sidewalk. Jesus fuck. Woojin was such a turn on. It had only been a couple of days but his body had somehow forgotten that simple fact. All he wanted to do was remember Woojin’s hotness over and over again. Have it imprinted on his senses like a maniac. Woojin Woojin Woojin Woojin. Jisung tightened his hand around the man’s throat, quivering in excitement when he was able to count the beats of Woojin’s racing pulse. He dropped his phone to the floor to free up a hand and stroked the man’s jaw with his thumb, reaching and reaching until he could push the tip of it against the man’s lips. He shuddered in delight as he watched the finger disappear into Woojin’s mouth, as he felt Woojin’s tongue circle the digit. As they stared at each other, he saw the exact moment when passion got her claws into the man. Kerosene meeting fire. Everything going up in flames. He had been half-dead before but Jisung’s touch had brought him to life. Woojin let out the tiniest strained choking noise. Jisung loosened his grip on the man’s neck and it was like they were taking their very first deep breaths together. “Let’s fuck. It’s been _forever_.” Jisung leaned forward, slamming their mouths together with the grace of a car wreck.

 

Music continued to pour out of Jisung’s headphones; _I need to escape, break these chains._ The dissonant chords weren’t exactly romantic, but Jisung wasn’t all too keen about sentimentality.

 

Woojin kissed him back. Tentatively. Almost softly. It was as if he thought of Jisung as fragile. His big hands found Jisung’s arms, groping down to his tiny ant waist, his slim thighs. His fingers barely applied pressure. Jisung had to fix that. There was no way he was coming out of this unsatisfied. His hand tightened around Woojin’s throat again, squeezing harder. He pushed his tongue even farther into Woojin’s mouth. He let his eyes glide shut as Woojin’s hands cupped his ass. Jisung angled his hips _just so_ and, at long last, Woojin seemed to remember himself. He remembered that whatever bond they had was not cultivated through softness. Woojin leaned forward, crashing their chests together. He sucked Jisung’s tongue into his mouth hungrily. His teeth dragged over the muscle, biting. Leaving indentations of pain and want behind.

 

_Every hour on the clock feels like I’m wasting away._

 

Woojin reached a hand up Jisung’s shirt. His hand was burning hot against Jisung’s cool flesh. It made him feel like he was melting. It almost hurt. Woojin ran his hands up the center of his spine, getting an obscene noise out of Jisung like he was a musician on an upright bass.

 

Seungmin was still pissed and definitely not in the mood for voyeurism. He grabbed a fistful of Jisung’s inky blue hair and yanked so hard that Jisung saw stars dance in front of his eyes.

 

Jisung had no choice but to let himself be separated from Woojin’s mouth. From his body. From his hands. “What the fuck,” he screeched when the pain in his scalp had subsided enough for him to even inhale.

 

“Didn’t I say you’re not fucking in my car,” Seungmin asked. “So don’t fuck in my car!”

 

“Why are you so mad?” Jisung questioned.

 

“I don’t want to watch that shit. I don’t want to hear that shit!”

 

“Close your eyes.”

 

“I have to fucking drive, Jisung. And it’s my fucking car. Be respectful!”

 

“It’s been days,” Jisung grunted. He had to lean even farther away from Woojin just to ease the tension between his skull and his hair. “Fuck.” He was a panting mess. “Just let me have him!”

 

Seungmin raised his voice further. The fact that he could actually get some rumbling bass in it was news to Jisung. “I don’t care. Wait until I drop you off.”

 

“Do you want my dick, too? Shit! Are you jealous?” Jisung swung an arm backwards. He didn’t even know what part of Seungmin his fist connected with but the sharp thump of impact echoed in the car and made Seungmin whimper.

 

The mustached man growled out a “Fucking hell.” Then, louder, he added, “Why do you think I want to fuck you?”

 

“What other reason do you keep hanging around me?” Jisung swung his arm back again. He could tell just by how it felt, just by how it _sounded_ , that he’d socked Seungmin right in the goddamn mouth.

 

“Shit! Fuck!” Seungmin let go of him.

 

Free again, Jisung tried one more time to crawl into Woojin’s lap and finish what they started but whatever flaming passion the guy had for him a mere ten seconds ago had been extinguished about as quickly. Jisung couldn’t even press his lips to his boyfriend’s neck before Woojin shoved him away, forcing him onto the back seat next to him instead of in his lap.

 

Woojin said, “Shit, Jisung, I just want to be warm right now.” He folded his arms across his chest, teeth chattering, and turned so that his back faced the blue-haired boy.

 

Jisung sat there, defeated. Deflated. Of course Woojin wanted _warmth_. Of course the man of his dreams wanted the one thing on the entire goddamn planet that he couldn’t give him.

 

The guitar riff of the song’s chorus split open during the intense silence that collapsed on top of them. Brutally, the song charged forward, unaware and uncaring of the colossal damage it had become the original soundtrack to. The vocals of the second verse surrounded Jisung. Wolf-like. Fierce. Howling.

 

_A fire burns so slowly inside my chest._

 

“Are you mangy animals done back there? Jesus!” Seungmin got the car in gear and they started moving again. Agonizingly slow. Terribly loud. The music almost wasn’t enough. Not like this.

 

_Please someone save me._

 

Jisung grabbed his Beats from off his neck and slid them on over his ears. The volume of the guitars rose exponentially. The bass thrummed to the center of his brain and it was that one flimsy little buffer that was keeping Jisung from completely flipping out. From just exploding outward and burying everything under ice.

 

That’s when he noticed it. Just out of the corner of his eye.

 

Looking up at it, fully taking it on, had been a critical mistake.

 

What he saw was his own naked face reflected back to him in the rearview mirror.

 

_And every time I die a little more inside._

 

As loud as it was, the music should have been pounding straight into him but now it was coming from very far away. Echoing and echoing. So distant it may as well have been muted. His chest seized. His every muscle went stiff like he’d been electrocuted. Where was his mask? Where was his fucking mask? Why could he _see everything_?

 

Shit.

 

SHIT!

 

The more he stared at himself the more repulsive his reflection became. No amount of dyed hair or fancy clothes or designer sneakers could cover up how fucking ugly he was. All he could focus on were his huge, saucer-like eyes. They took up half his face. He looked like a goddamn owl! And his nose… On a normal day, he hated how fat it was but now that he’d gotten his ass beat by soldiers, it was noticeably crooked and crusted over with dried blood. It was red and rubbed raw like Rudolph’s glowing honker.

 

 _I never thought I could feel so empty_ , the chorus of the song bounced in his ears.

 

It was the first time in a long time that the music wasn’t helping. It wasn’t curing anything.

 

“Goddammit,” he hissed. Genuine fear was taking root in his head. He pressed himself against the back of the seat, unable to take his eyes off the ogre staring back at him in the glass.

 

Seungmin shot him a look but paid him no mind, returning his eyes to the narrow, hilly road ahead of them. This time of night, most of the houses they drove past were completely dark. Every neighborhood they rolled through was still and quiet and blanketed by old snow. Woojin still had his gaze out the window and that’s how he noticed the gathering clouds in the sky. He turned around to watch Jisung with curious eyes.

 

Jisung sat statue-still. As tense as a string about to snap. At first glance, it just looked like he was silently fuming.

 

Woojin turned away again, taking a deep breath in and out, praying that he’d be able to get at least one night of uninterrupted sleep.

 

Meanwhile, Jisung sunk deeper and deeper into the dark miasma at the bottom of his head. His disgust at his own reflection grew. It fucked with his perception. To him, his face morphed and changed before his eyes. Twisting and contorting into something surreal and monstrous. His eyes bulged, all veiny and red. Fangs sprouted from his mouth. The skin around his forehead split open, leaking puss and blood. More red eyes bulged forth. One by one until he had eight of them like a spider.

 

Jisung screamed. Not out of anger but out of fear. High-pitched. Screechy.

 

_So empty down inside, oh God, it eats me alive._

 

The guitars of the song rumbled like an earthquake but even their immense power wasn’t enough to shake him free.

 

“What the fuck,” Seungmin asked from the front seat. “What’s his problem? Is that him making it snow?” He turned on the windshield wipers.

 

It took Woojin a moment to catch on. “He doesn’t have his mask.”

 

“What? His mask? Why the fuck should that matter?”

 

“You wouldn’t understand,” Woojin snapped at him. He turned to Jisung. Slowly, cautiously, he put a hand on Jisung’s skinny shoulder. “Jisung. Jisung, look at me.”

 

Jisung only had eyes on the mirror. Everything else was happening far away. To someone else.

 

Why was he so ugly? His chin jutted out too far. His eyebrows were stupidly thin. This is why he hid his face all of the time! To save everyone around him from this nightmare! No wonder Woojin didn’t want to fuck him. He was hot as hell and could get anybody he wanted but he was trapped with an ape-looking beast like Jisung. God, look at his fucking cheeks! It was like he had a balloon in his mouth. And his teeth? The crooked, jagged things would look more at home in a shark’s maw. He wanted to fucking throw up. He wanted to break everything.

 

The snow outside came down in thicker and thicker clumps. The wind picked up, sounding like thunder as it whooshed between buildings.

 

“Fuck,” Seungmin yelled at the sudden change in weather. He slowed down. He turned the windshield wipers up as fast they could go. Nothing helped him see better.

 

Jisung reached into his pocket and grabbed Squirrel by her handle. He pulled the weapon out and held the serrated edge up to his disgusting, bloated face. He’d just peel his pockmarked skin off and start again! Certainly, it would grow back prettier? He wouldn’t have to look like a fucking Picasso painting all of his life, would he? He pressed the knife to his face almost hard enough to break skin.

 

“Jiji,” Woojin said sternly. He swung a leg over Jisung’s thighs to straddle him and put his face directly in front of the younger man’s, becoming an impenetrable wall between him and the tiny mirror. “Look at me.” He said each syllable slowly so that Jisung could read the movements of his mouth as the music clawed at his hair and neck and ears, dragging him kicking and screaming back to his senses.

 

_I have to win this fight and put this shit all behind._

 

“Jisung, are you with me?”

 

Jisung looked at him. Now it was Woojin who repulsed him. The man was so gorgeous. God, he hated how hot Woojin was. Every inch of him was a masterpiece and he’d only sully such beauty being this close to Jisung. But- “Let’s fuck,” he whined. Where before, his voice had been full of lust, now he was just pathetic and lonely and teary-eyed and desperate. He was practically begging for it and not even in a sexy way. “Don’t you want me?”

 

“For fuck’s sake, we’re almost at your house,” Seungmin bellowed from the front. “Horny bastard.”

 

“Please,” Jisung pouted. He clutched Woojin’s bare thigh. The muscles went taut beneath his cold palm. “Please?” Woojin _liked_ ugly things, right? Jisung pushed his empty hand under his coat and grabbed hold of Woojin’s soft dick. “I’m good enough, right?”

 

Woojin physically recoiled from his ice-cold touch, gritting his teeth. “Jisung,” he choked out. “You need your gloves.”

 

_I have to fight these demons to get through this alive._

 

The music was all but forgotten. It wasn’t helping anyway. It was a cure his body had temporarily acquired a resistance for. “Just a little bit,” Jisung insisted. “Just enough so that I _know_.”

 

Seungmin had no tact. “You’re not fucking in my fucking car.”

 

Jisung squeezed Woojin’s dick. Instead of eliciting a pornographic moan from the man, it made Woojin sit back and hiss like he’d been bitten.

 

Jisung shoved Woojin off of him, throwing him backwards. His need for reassurance hadn’t been met. His brain’s only response was anger. “Get the fuck out.”

 

Woojin had gotten wedged in the tight spot between the back of the passenger seat and the back seat. “Huh,” Woojin questioned. “Get out?”

 

“Stop the car, Seungmin.” Jisung yanked his Beats off his ears and the song’s heavy screaming and chugging guitars filled the air. “Now!” When Seungmin didn’t obey, Jisung leaned forward so he could put the tip of Squirrel’s blade to Seungmin’s temple. Barely above a whisper, he repeated, “Now.”

 

“Shit.” Seungmin slammed on brakes. The tires screeched. The car came to a halt. Sometime in the night, the streets had been plowed and a pile of snow almost waist-high lined the sides of the street. Already, Jisung’s black mood was changing the weather. Hail was falling now. Huge, golfball-sized chunks of ice crashed over the roof of the car and split into pieces on the road and the sidewalk and the roofs of the houses nearby.

 

The stench of burnt rubber clogged up Jisung’s nose. He turned his attention back to Woojin. “Get out.” He pointed Squirrel at the man. “Get out!”

 

“Jisung,” Woojin said calmly, holding up his hands in surrender. “I’m fucking naked.”

 

Jisung snatched his phone off of the floor where it had fallen, not caring that he had yanked the car charger out of the cigarette lighter. “Fine. I’ll go.” He was already swinging open the back door and jumping out of the car. Hail smashed against the door frame. One hit the top of his hand and left a red welt. He didn't even flinch.

 

“Please, Jisung,” Woojin called after him, though probably too late. “Wait till we get home. We’ll fuck all you want.”

 

Jisung screamed, “I don’t give a fuck!” Due to his temper, the wind changed directions. Now hail was starting to fly into the car.

 

“Where are you going,” Seungmin asked, managing to sound concerned.

 

“Away,” Jisung said. Then he slammed the car door shut and disappeared into the storm of his own making.


	6. The Gun Show by In This Moment

Putting on headphones meant shutting out the fucking world.

 

It meant slamming the fucking door on it. Hanging a ‘do not disturb’ sign on the knob. Screaming “I WANT TO BE ALONE!”

 

For Jisung, being alone was all he wanted.

 

It had only been a handful of weeks since he’d ran away from home and he was still getting acclimated to his new freedom. He was still getting used to being able to do things without permission or supervision. Ran away? Pssh. More like _broke_ _out_. He was no coward. It was a planned escape. A caged bird flipping the lock. A dog digging beneath the fence. He couldn’t stay. He had to go. Telling everyone on staff to fuck off and choke on dicks before throwing all of his shit in the trunk of a taxi and leaving while his butler watched from the front door. His parents didn’t even care enough to beg him to stay. At least not until they realized he was serious. Then they’d start sending men with guns after him.

 

Jisung had gotten fucking sick of them. His parents. The chefs and maids and gardeners. Sick of everyone. Everyone was in on it. He’d gotten sick of being in that senselessly large house, alone but not alone. Sick of the lack of privacy. Legitimately _ill_. Their concern, their ‘care,’ was the disease that kept him bedridden.

 

The doctors came through every morning, checking his vitals and making him piss into a cup or shit into a bucket or bleed into a bag so that they could monitor him, mark everything on charts and graphs and reassure his parents that the injections they’d been giving him for the past several months were having no adverse effects on his physical health. His emotional health, fuck yeah, but they didn’t give two shits about that. If the numbers, or whatever the fuck the doctors were keeping track of, were ‘good’ then his father would take him to the lower levels of the mansion and force him to do drills. Turn water into steam, steam into ice. Create clouds, rain, sleet, snow, hail. Redirect the flow of blood. Piece his own skin back together after being cut. Make different shapes out of frozen-over blocks of water like he was a goddamn ice sculptor who did parties or some shit. If the numbers were ‘bad,’ then there were more needles.

 

Jisung hated it.

 

He hated being poked and prodded. Tinkered on like the old car in the garage. He hated being whispered about like he wasn’t in the room. He hated decisions being made for him. He hated being called a ‘weapon’ to his face. He was just a tool to them. They told him so. He wasn’t a living, breathing thing but a _creation_ . An object to be groomed and sharpened and he hated the mold they were forcing him to fit into. He hated being controlled. He hated being watched. And Chan was always watching. Sure, the guy had been in service to the Han family since they were both basically children, but it wasn’t until Jisung’s parents started strapping Jisung down to chairs and shoving needles in his arms that they made Chan _watch_ him. He was always there, Chan was. Standing in corners, lurking at the ends of corridors, watching Jisung through windows or doors, pretending it was a coincidence that they were coming through different doors into the same room as if it weren’t clear Chan was just following him. If Jisung’s body temperature went up, Chan called his mother and gave her the exact numbers. If Jisung felt like eating an apple for lunch, Chan would write it down along with all of the other mindless tidbits he wrote down about Jisung to send to _someone_ at the end of the day. Every time Jisung got upset or stressed and his powers slipped out of him by accident, Chan used some weird-looking camera to record Jisung while his powers malfunctioned and then sent the footage to his father and the doctors. The constant surveillance terrified Jisung for the first few years. He was young and impressionable and scared, hardly able to deal with the changes to his body but then add on not having a moment to himself on top of all of that and the mansion turned into a prison. A cocoon trapping him and transforming him. He couldn’t eat, couldn’t go out and party, couldn’t make friends, couldn’t sleep or dig up dirty shit on the web or take a piss or jerk off without Chan being _close by_. Always.

 

It was easier to just erase things, Jisung had discovered. Erase his idea of love so that he would stop expecting it from the people around him. Erase his shame so that Chan walking in on him while he had a hand around his dick or a finger up his ass wouldn’t embarrass him. Erase his pride so that being waited on hand and foot, being hand-fed his meals and drinks and ‘medicine’ and pills, wouldn’t make him feel like less of a grown ass man. Erase his sympathy. His understanding.

 

Erase. Erase. Erase. Erase.

 

A computer deleting files. A hard drive defragging.

 

Then, Jisung changed the way he thought about things.

 

He stopped thinking of himself as an object and instead started thinking of others as objects. As playthings. Dolls to be discarded when they became useless or unfun.

 

He gave a brand new reason to the fear in the eyes of the waitstaff whenever they looked at him: man feared what he did not understand and man did not understand gods.

 

They had turned Jisung into a god, he believed. So he started behaving like one.

 

He created whatever he wanted and gave them names. He destroyed. Sometimes for a reason, sometimes just because, but mostly because it did not please him. He reacted with anger and jealousy when he received no praise and treated those who revered him with something mildly warmer than indifference. He was only satisfied when people feared him, respected him. He lived for the moments when the waitstaff lowered their gaze to avoid his or bent their knee and kissed his hand. He was a king, after all, and he was only happy when he could remind everyone on the estate that he was the one in control, that he was the one who reigned, that he could take anything and everything away from them and that they’d do well to remember that.

 

Life became easier then.

 

Jisung learned what to do and say to make the doctors back off. To keep the syringes out of his arms. He learned how much of his powers he could exert in front of his parents to remind them of the thing they’d turned him into without them pointing a tranq gun at his chest. He learned new and secret ways around the mansion that would buy him even a few precious minutes of alone time, away from Chan’s prying, ever-watching eyes.

 

Then a thought occurred to him: what good was a god who did not descend from Mt. Olympus and walk among the mortals, crushing them underfoot?

 

So he left his Mt. Olympus in the back seat of a white and green taxi and found that the easiest way to live as someone new, as someone who did not grow up in the Han mansion, was to max out all of his credit cards and erase his past, erase his self-pity, erase all of his weak and soft and pitiful desires. He had to push everything else out.

 

Erase. Erase. Erase.

 

Until nothing but music was left.

 

Music was his only friend. Well, maybe Chan had been a friend… but only when Jisung ordered him to be.

 

Being out in the city was an experience he’d never had before, as locked up in Rapunzel’s tower as he had been. Ice ran in his veins but Seoul was a cold, cold place. He had snuffed out his own emotions but Seoul was an unfeeling, unforgiving place that gave no shits. He had secrets, but Seoul hid entire universes in her dark corners.

 

Jisung loved it.

 

No one paid him any attention. No one _watched_ him. No matter how wildly he dyed his hair, no matter how outrageously he dressed, he was anonymous. And headphones made him that much more invisible. Unfuckwithable. Headphones were no fucking different from holding up both middle fingers and yelling at everyone around that they weren’t worth a damn. That anything they had to say to him didn’t matter. Get out of the way or get _got_.

 

Loud music, on the other hand, was simply therapeutic.

 

It was sheer dumb luck that created a scenario where two of Jisung’s favorite things came together in the space between two speakers: peace and quiet.

 

That’s why it always pissed him the fuck off when people saw his headphones and still tried to fucking talk to him. When they heard his music and still felt like they could fucking trespass on his personal space and _bother_ him. Like the motherfucker behind him now. Jisung ignored the jab of a finger on his shoulder the first time. Even the second time, which was a world record for him. The third time, unfortunately, wasn’t a charm. God, he couldn’t even fucking walk home in peace! His powers surged up in him, flooding his insides with arctic cold. He clenched his fists and grit his teeth and every muscle in his body went tense as he strongly considered murdering the cunt. In response, the wind came barreling down the street, sending paper and debris fluttering, knocking over trash cans, dropping the temperature of the late afternoon by several dramatic degrees.

 

A fourth jab on his shoulder. Harder than before.

 

Jisung yanked off his headphones and whirled around to face the annoyance. “What the absolute fuck is your problem!?”

 

The guy walking behind him barely flinched at the high volume of his voice. He was tall and square-shouldered and his large hands pulled back to rest on his wide hips. “Hey,” he said, “are you hurt?”

 

It was the most stupid question Jisung had ever heard.

 

The man continued, “Need me to call an ambul--”

 

“Of course not. The fuck?” He stared the man up and down. He could create a sharp knife-like shape out of the moisture in the air. He could do it in less than a breath. Should he thrust it into the man’s neck, his chest or his stomach? Which place would be the most likely one to learn the fucker a lesson? “Step off,” he spit out instead, his voice muffled by the mask he wore. “Go preach about the lord to someone else.” He shuffled even farther away.

 

The stranger was persistent. “I’m no youth pastor!” He followed after Jisung and gripped him by the forearm, stopping him. “You’re limping, dude. Need a hand?”

 

Stupid stupid motherfucking stupid! Jisung slapped the guy’s goddamned hand off of his arm. “I’m not limping, bitch. I’m trying not to put creases in my new kicks!” He pointed at his shoes. Jisung didn’t even know why he was saying all of this to the guy. He wouldn’t understand! No one would. Jisung silently fumed. His bad temper made the wind pick up, made dark clouds form on the horizon and fill the air with the charged scent of incoming snow but it was already winter and no one found it strange. No one looked. No one _watched_. Except this guy. He was leaning in close to Jisung. Too close. Who did this guy think he was? With his shitty coiffed hair and his shitty starched-stiff shirt and his shitty, yuppie tie! He probably sat in a tiny cubicle all day doing absolutely jack shit. What did he know about anything? Jisung solidified moist air molecules in the space between his fingers, creating a long, skinny pick made of ice. Perfect for slicing open necks. He didn’t care about the people walking up and down the sidewalk around them. He didn’t mind an audience. They’d probably enjoy the spectacle. “Dude, I’m warning you…”

 

Then the guy said the most surprising thing: “I preordered that set, too!” He was staring down at Jisung’s all-white shoes with a solid orange stripe across the thick sole. “I got them in black on black, though. Don’t tell my boss I bought from our competitors.”

 

Jisung didn’t care. Not even a single fuck was given. He didn’t know this dude’s boss. “Leave me the fuck alone.” He walked away and started to pull his headphones back over his ears.

 

“Barely fucking managed to order a pair in my size before the servers crashed.” The guy followed him up the sidewalk. “When did yours come in?”

 

Jisung heaved a sigh. He usually didn’t give people the time of day. He didn’t know why he was still letting this guy talk. “This morning.” And showing them off was the only reason he was even outside right now.

 

The guy gasped. “Just this morning? They’re probably waiting for me at my doorstep then! I’ve been counting down the days.” He looked up at Jisung and _smiled_.

 

Jisung stopped walking. He dropped his weapon of ice. It cracked in half when it hit the sidewalk, skittering across the concrete between his new shoes. What a smile, he thought. With dimples and mildly crooked teeth and everything. It had been months and months since he’d moved to Seoul and, sure, he’d been doing his fucking best to keep his fucking distance from people, and yeah, his honeymoon with the big city had ended and his autonomy was starting to metamorphosize into loneliness and he was still trying to convince himself that he wanted it that way, but at that moment, he wanted to see this guy smile at him again. Some tiny little gray chunk of Jisung’s brain clicked over and made him… smile back. Jisung reached into his pocket for his phone so that he could pause his music. The wailing guitars and thrashing drums came to a dead halt. For the first time in ages, Jisung gave someone his full attention. “If you want these, you’re going to have to saw off my feet at the fucking ankles.” Jisung looked the guy up and down again, reevaluating him. Seeing him not as a meatbag to stab or punch but a meatbag to _talk to_ . The guy looked so prim, though. So proper. So _good_. Pure. Innocent. His lack of corruption disgusted Jisung. A guy like this would break too easily beneath the might of a king. With the revaluation failed, Jisung rolled his eyes and turned away. The man went back to being a shitstain only worth walking away from. “Fuck off.”

 

Undeterred, the office worker asked, “You a sneakerhead, too?”

 

He had been about to _run for it_ but the question made Jisung pause. “All I do is buy shoes.” The delivery boxes showing up at the door to his shitty apartment was probably the only thing that kept him going.

 

“I just got off work, actually.” The stranger raised a large hand to his collar and loosened his tie. The motion made the white sleeves of his dress shirt struggle against the bulge and swell of his biceps. Fucking shit. “Did you want to come over,” the man asked seriously, “and take a look at my shoe collection?”

 

The temptation was real. “It’s not bigger than mine,” Jisung scoffed, recalling his bookcases lined with row after row of shoeboxes.

 

The guy raised a confident eyebrow, even turned his head to the side as if to call attention to the sharp line of his jaw. “You wanna bet? I’ve probably got a few pairs you’ve never seen before.” Then, to sweeten the offer, “And maybe a few that haven’t even hit the streets yet.”

 

“Pssh. Probably some bogus bootleg shit, my dude. I’m positive you got ripped off.”

 

“I don’t think this particular company would rip me off.” The guy reached into the front pocket of his dress shirt and pulled free an ID card on an orange and white lanyard. Jisung looked at it briefly but even that was long enough for his eyes to widen in surprise. The Nike logo at the top of the badge was unmistakable.

 

Jisung did something right then that he’d never done for anyone else on this fucking hellhole of a planet. He gave this guy a third chance. Jisung squinted at the name beneath the portrait: Kim Woojin. “Holy fuckballs,” Jisung mumbled as his eyes wandered back up to the iconic swoosh at the top of the badge. Maybe the dude wasn’t as much of a goodie two shoes stick-in-the-mud as he looked. Maybe he actually mattered.

 

Woojin stashed his badge back in his pocket and smiled smugly. “But if you’re not into big collections, I understand.”

 

It was clearly bait, and the passive-aggressive variety at that, but Jisung had already been hooked. “Fuck yeah, dude. I want to see everything.”

 

“Everything,” Woojin repeated. His expression morphed. Less sugar. More spice. “Even shit that’s not shoes?” There was a spark in his eye that _started something_ in the space between them. A chemical fire that raged and blazed and threatened to melt Jisung right then and there on the sidewalk. The guy shoved his hands in his pockets and took one step closer to Jisung, effectively bringing them face to face, chest to chest, solar plexus to solar plexus.

 

Jisung inhaled his cologne. Was mummified by his body heat. “Especially shit that’s not shoes,” he breathed. He didn’t even hide it as he glanced down, hungrily drinking in the curve of Woojin’s dick as it hardened against the fabric of his light gray slacks. Shit. Not giving a single fuck about the fact that they were doing this in the middle of the sidewalk at the height of the evening rush, Jisung reached out and placed his hand on the man’s crotch.

 

Jisung tried not to show his excitement, his terror, his jealousy, as it clicked in his head that Woojin’s cock was about as long as his hand, from wrist to fucking fingertip.

 

Goddamn.

 

He tested it, pressing his palm ever so slightly harder against it. It twitched beneath his fingers and got the faintest moan out of Woojin.

 

Fuckity fuck fuck. Finally! A man not afraid to make some noise. Jisung lowered his hand and met Woojin’s eye. “I’d like to see you try to use this.”

 

Woojin leaned forward and pressed his mouth to Jisung’s forehead with surprising intimacy. Not a kiss. Just mouth against skin. Words against skin. “I think I’ll surprise you.”

 

Jisung shivered. “I want you.”

 

“Then let’s go,” Woojin said, pulling away. The innocent church boy look had been stripped away from him like a magician’s trick and Jisung was overwhelmed by a primal, beastly thought: he wouldn’t be doing the corrupting here. He was about to _be_ corrupted. And that excited him. “My place is that way.” Woojin jerked his head up the street, in the opposite direction Jisung had been walking. Woojin turned around, not even checking to see if Jisung followed and definitely putting more switch in his hips than necessary, making his slacks cling to the round globes of his ass.

 

Fuck fuck fuck. This was really happening.

 

Jisung confidently strolled after the guy, already a horny, itching fiend. He picked up the pace until they were walking shoulder to shoulder, until he was in front. He spun around to face the guy and couldn’t help the smirk that stretched his lips. “You think you’re in control here, bitch? You convinced you can _handle_ me? Huh?”

 

Woojin said three words. Three words that Jisung, at that moment, wouldn’t know would make him give Woojin a fourth chance. A dozenth chance. Fifty chances. A thousand. A million. Just three words: “Prove me wrong.”

 

✁✃✁

 

Fuck Woojin.

 

Fuck him. Fuck him and his humongous, useless dick. He could fucking rot in hell!

 

Jisung ran down the sidewalk, ignoring the pain in his socked feet as they slapped over the rough, uneven pavement. Ignoring Seungmin’s car horn blaring at his back.

 

“Jisung, goddammit,” he heard Seungmin’s voice float after him in the dark. “A temper tantrum because you can’t get ass? Come _on_!”

 

Deathly brave of him but Jisung was too annoyed to be impressed. “Shove it up your ass, whore!”

 

Seungmin’s ancient car engine roared like a monster as he sped up to try and keep pace with Jisung.

 

Fuck. He just wouldn’t back off, would he? Jisung grabbed hold of his powers, ripped them free from deep within him and set it all loose like a dog off its chain. The temperature dropped. The wind howled past Jisung, legitimately lifting him off of the ground for a perilous second. The rope dangling off a nearby flagpole snapped from the force and the white flag at the top of it was yanked into the wind, peeling through the air like a ghost. More falling hail battered Jisung’s shoulders and legs. He raised his hands in front of his head to protect his face but the worsening weather was a mirror to his soul, reflecting how he felt perfectly. He hooked a left at the intersection and sprinted down a main street. For a bit, he thought he was in the clear, but then he heard a car engine. He saw headlights. Seungmin was on his ass again.

 

“I’ll take you home,” Seungmin yelled at him. “Woojin said he’s sorry.”

 

Well, why couldn’t Woojin say it? “Fuck off,” Jisung screamed at the top of his lungs. The hail falling from the sky increased in density. The cacophonous noise the stones made crashing over roofs and against windows and car hoods… It was terrible and terrific! Jisung ducked across the street, cutting towards an alley too narrow for a car to follow. He ran and ran, just wanting some space. The headlights faded behind him. He could no longer hear Seungmin’s ratty car. Thank fuck.

 

He burst out of the alley on the far side, hooked a left and kept running. How could Woojin fucking do that to him? Turn him down when he was at his weakest? Fucking say no to him and push him away like that?

 

Goddammit! Woojin was such a whiny bitch. _I just wanna be warm._ Wahhh, I’m cold. Wahhh! “Like a fucking baby!” Ugh! The selfish prick. He’d wind up cold in the ground if he wasn’t careful. Shit!

 

Shit.

 

...but as quickly as it came, Jisung’s anger lost all of its hardened edges, leaving something deformed and ugly in its place: sadness.

 

He stopped running. His lungs were hot, his chest was tight, his legs were sore. He sucked in a deep breath and tried to shove down the dark, troubling thoughts bubbling up in his shitty brain but he wasn’t fast enough. The doubt came rolling in like storm clouds. Of course Woojin had rejected him.

 

“I mean, look at me,” Jisung worried. He raised a hand to his face, squeezing and pulling at his cheeks and lips. “Why _would_ he want to fuck me?” And it was a shame, too. Car sex would have been _so_ hot. They’d have to twist their limbs all weird just to fit in the back seat. Woojin could get the seatbelts going in a way to bind Jisung’s wrists or something and remove his control, his power. That shit would have been perfect but Woojin had to ruin everything. As usual.

 

Fuck Woojin.

 

Fuck.

 

Woojin.

 

Jisung really should have left him back at the hydroelectric plant.

 

He was clenching his teeth so hard he was giving himself a headache. He made himself relax but his anger didn’t stay gone long. He hadn’t buried it deep enough. Already, it was surging back up in him but he welcomed its presence because anything was better than feeling… whatever the fuck it was he’d been feeling. Jisung needed to blow off some steam--unload--and he was about to walk past the one good place he could do it. He shoved open the door to the gym and stepped inside the dimly-lit place. It wasn’t some fancy 24-hour monthly membership location. It wasn’t even a trendy, gentrified crossfit spot. Honestly, it wasn’t all that much better than a prison yard but this was the one place in the neighborhood with a trainer who hadn’t yet given up on Jisung’s… lack of discipline. The stench of stale sweat, unwashed bodies and old musk assaulted his nose, almost enough to make him gag. This place was filthy. Cheap. Maybe even a little sleazy. The kind of dirty that bleach couldn’t completely clean away. That made it perfect. Jisung could just add his smudged emotions to the mess by sweating out his problems on the mat.

 

His head swiveled left. Some god-awful pop music with an annoying 808 bass riff was pulsing through the gym speakers. That shit _had_ to go. Jisung made a beeline for the stereo system near the front desk and took a few moments to glance over the knobs and screens. Fuck. This kind of shit came on the radio? Jisung stuck out his tongue in disgust. He found the high-end stereo’s USB input and plugged his phone in. The phone and stereo connected with a musical trill. Jisung flipped the source control from TUNER to USB. The dance music stopped suddenly but the gym didn’t go silent. He could hear people working out farther inside the building: the thud of shoes on treadmills, the clank of weights against the floor, the rhythmic whirring of the stationary bikes, the _thwak-thwak_ of flesh on flesh as fighters went at it in the boxing rink. Jisung wasn’t supposed to fuck with the sound system but rules were made to be broken. “We need some Maria Brink in this bitch and if anyone’s got a problem with that, they can go.” He started up his music app and queued up the song that had just gotten stuck in his head.

 

It was starting already. Atmospheric sounds bleeding slowly into each other. Wind and whistles.

 

Shit. He had to hurry.

 

Functioning on autopilot, he peeled out of his holey, filthy socks and his snow-damp pants and his blood-soaked shirt on his way to the lockers, not caring who saw him strip as he crossed the floor. He shoved the ruined clothing into the locker he always used here, carefully laid Squirrel on top of the bundle and then pulled free his equipment: loose-fitting gym shorts, a mouthpiece and a pair of cloth wrist guards. He didn’t need much for what he was about to do.

 

Back on the gym floor, the song was wrapping up it’s long intro. The atmospheric sounds bled together as guitars rumbled in like distant thunder. Everything building and building. Escalating. He followed the thuds of fleshy impact and the grunts of effort to the boxing ring where two combatants were grappling for the advantage. One of them--the slightly taller one--widened their stance, spun sideways and flipped their opponent onto their back in a fluid, effortless movement.

 

 _Welcome to the gun show!_ Maria’s voice filled the gym and, not even a breath later, the heavy guitars followed suit, shoving their sound into every nook and cranny. A squealing solo soaring high over everything.

 

Jisung sucked in a deep breath as if he could inhale the glorious sound. That was the stuff.

 

“Shit, Jisung,” the boxer that was still standing shouted over the song. “What did I fucking tell you about the stereo?”

 

“Let me knock you the fuck out, Jeongin,” Jisung challenged him, ignoring his complaints.

 

Jeongin turned his attention back to the guy he’d tossed to the floor, the one writhing around and gasping. “I’m in the middle of something.”

 

“Were you?” Jisung hoisted himself up onto the elevated rink and ducked beneath the ropes. “Because we’re starting whether you give a fuck or not.”

 

“Shit. Absolutely no patience.” Jeongin ran a hand through his sweat-soaked hair. It had been bleached blonde a few weeks back but now his dark roots were showing through, eating up half of his scalp. His shorts hung low over toned thighs, carved hips and beefy calves. His torso was all long, corded muscle in stark contrast to his round, pretty face. He watched as Jisung approached the middle of the ring, closing the distance between them. “Fine then. You fucking asked, bro. Okay. Take five.” He kicked the dude just starting to pick himself up off the floor. “Other side of the ropes, dude.” He nudged the guy away from the center of the rink.

 

The man he addressed did his best to start crawling away. Jeongin must have got him good because he was wheezing and putting a great amount of effort into not putting any weight on his left foot. Jisung watched him limp away. The guy had short-cropped hair and an almost feline sharpness to his expression. Although it was evident he was fit, his body was lean and taut like a dancer, not chunky like a fighter.

 

He had to be new here, Jisung decided. He borderline didn’t belong.

 

 _Hey cowboy, how’s it going tonight?_ The vocals of the song came in loud and hard while the guitars shot down low and staccato like the rat-a-tat-tat of machine gun fire.

 

Jisung hooked his attention back towards Jeongin, who still had his back turned. He bounced from foot to foot, hands held up near his face defensively. His own body was nowhere near as toned as Jeongin’s but he was slim and strong after months of training with the guy. Not caring about form or tactics or manners with his mind as clouded over as it was, Jisung rushed in, thinking Jeongin was still distracted by the combatant he was helping over the ropes. Ever vigilant, Jeongin turned to the right just enough to avoid the hook that would have connected with his jaw. He swung his own fist out in a sharp jab, clipping Jisung’s shoulder and forcing him to spring back a step, out of range.

 

“You’ve got blood all over you,” Jeongin pointed out, motioning to the wine-colored stains that painted Jisung’s bare torso as dark as a summer tan.

 

“Only some of it is mine,” Jisung deflected. “Shut up and fight me.” He rushed in again, desperately needing to burn through all of his anger or the storm outside would never let up.

 

Jeongin dodged backwards and let out a snarky laugh. “You’re going to have to move faster than that.” He held his hand out palm up and flicked his fingers in the universal symbol for _bring that ass here, boy._ Jisung took the bait. Lunged at the dude. Jab, jab, left hook, knee. All four connected, forcing Jeongin to back away towards the center of the rink and throw up his guard. Take this seriously. “Someone’s pissed,” the personal trainer commented. He used his tongue to snap his mouthguard properly into place. No more fooling around. Finally.

 

“I said, shut up.”

 

The song continued, _Come on in and you can buy me a drink._

 

Jeongin rushed him this time. Faster than Jisung was expecting. He took a fist across the jaw and a kick to the ribs before he jumped sideways defensively. Jeongin expected such a move, followed him to the other side of the rink and kicked him hard. Pain shot up Jisung’s right leg but he hopped backwards to keep up some distance. “Who is the new kid,” Jisung asked, jerking his head in the direction of the guy who had his elbows propped up on the rink, watching their every move with wide-eyed wonder.

 

“Thought you said no talking?” Jeongin came at him again, hyper aggressive.

 

_Hey cowboy, I see your pistol is cocked._

 

Jisung braced himself, throwing up his arms to block the fast punches coming his way. Left, left, right, left. Shit. Jeongin could apply some _pressure_. “Fuck me,” Jisung huffed as he was pushed backwards. He raised a leg just to keep Jeongin’s foot out of his groin. He wanted a straight answer so he tried it again. “Who is he?”

 

“Felix,” Jeongin named him. He spun into a roundhouse kick which Jisung did not manage to duck under. Jeongin’s heel caught him right across the crown of his head, sending him sideways and almost to the mat. Jeongin wiped a thumb over his nose. “Signed up just yesterday, actually.”

 

_And you’ve got a look on your face like you want to rock._

 

Jisung could feel the pulse of the song’s bass drum in the arches of his bruised and dirty feet. It thrummed through him like a rapidly spiking heartbeat and he used the headbanging tempo to time his punches. Right jab. Hook. Straight kick. Nothing connected but it made Jeongin back off. Jisung danced away from the corner, back to the center of the rink.

 

“I know what you’re thinking,” Jeongin said. He waved a hand between the two of them. “Our training schedule doesn’t change.”

 

“Good. Because I’d crucify you if you ditched me.”

 

“Never. We made a deal.” Sealed it with blood and everything.

 

Jeongin rushed him, keeping his body low and his arms close to his torso. He waited until the last moment to spring his arms forward. Hook, jab, jab. Side kick. Elbow. Knee. His movements were precise. Professional. The blows rained down on Jisung’s arms and sides. He blocked a particularly high swing and used the opening to kick at Jeongin’s back.

 

“Fuck,” Jeongin groaned. “You really are pissed. What’s eating you?” He spun out of Jisung’s range but was already closing back in for the counterattack. A bold, risky uppercut that missed. A kick to the ribs that Jisung couldn’t block. That opened him up to the next hit and he caught Jeongin’s knee in his belly. The wind whooshed out of him. Jeongin still didn’t let up. He leaped forward, getting right up on Jisung, wrapped an arm tight around Jisung’s waist and threw him to the floor much like he did that Felix guy only a handful of moments before. “You still want to do this,” he taunted. “Or do you wanna cool off and try again when you mean it?”

 

Jisung was back on his feet for all of two seconds before Jeongin had an arm around his torso and a foot against the back of his knee. He was flipped onto his back a second time. Harder than before. Jisung just barely avoided hitting his head on the mat but the rest of his body was feeling the abuse. He couldn’t suck a deep breath into his lungs. His left hand was tingly and numb. A high-pitched ringing dug into his head. The violent noise of the song’s chorus was lost to him for a moment before it slowly inched back in like leeches in his ears. Fuck. Why couldn’t he do this shit right? He could usually hold his own but Jeongin was at the top of his game. Either that or his head was more messed up than he first thought, leaving him a step behind his opponent’s every move. No. He wasn’t going to go down like this! His anger bubbled up in him and he felt his powers leak out of him. He managed to get halfway sitting up.

 

Jeongin pounced on top of him and pinned him to the mat.

 

“Fuck,” Jisung hissed. He rolled over on his side to try to get his knees under him so he could buck Jeongin off of him. It didn’t work. Jeongin’s knee was digging right into his kidney, igniting pain all the way up his spine. Jisung let out a pained, agonized moan and lost that much more control over his powers. The trails of sweat rolling down his back turned into tiny little beads of ice.

 

“Uh uh uh,” Jeongin tsked at him. He put a hand on top of Jisung’s head and shoved his face into the floor. The collision struck a match across Jisung’s nerve endings, flaring up red-hot pain and reminding him of his smashed-in nose. That shit _still_ hadn’t healed? “Fight fair, you son of a bitch,” Jeongin scolded him. “Remember the rule. That’s your first and only warning.”

 

Jisung howled in pain and anger. With all of his might, he threw himself backwards, tossing Jeongin off of him and rolling to his feet.

 

 _Welcome to the gun show,_ Maria screamed into the gym as the chorus came to a close, _where the dead come alive._

 

Jeongin flipped over and stood up. “See, you’ve still got some fight in you.” He clapped his hands, reveling in his advantage. “Stop being a pussy and come at me with something other than clumsy anger.”

 

Jisung was a little wobbly on his knees and his vision was swimming but if he focused, he could push through it, reach his physical limits. Anything to wipe that shit-eating grin off Jeongin’s face. His patience all but gone, he charged forward, closing the gap between them. Right jab, elbow, knee. The only thing that hit was the elbow and it spun Jeongin’s head sideways.

 

“You watching, Felix,” Jeongin shouted out, smacking his cheeks with both hands to clear his head. “He won’t listen so I’m about to lay his ass out. Take notes.”

 

God. He was so fucking mouthy. Jisung continued his offensive; a flurry of punches that either went wide or grazed Jeongin’s blocking arms but Jisung succeeded in backing him up to the ropes.

 

_Hey cowboy, I hope you’re fast._

 

Jisung lunged, reared back with his left fist and aimed for Jeongin’s jaw but the boy had the reaction speed to step around Jisung’s fist, approach him from the left and grapple him a third time. Fuck! He was so goddamn fast. It would hurt like hell to get thrown to the floor again. Shit. Everything was going wrong tonight, Jisung thought. Why couldn’t he get a grip on anything? First Woojin, then this match. He was losing everything. Taking L’s from all sides. Jisung swung a fist wildly, blindly. By pure luck, he tagged Jeongin across the chin but he didn’t have the force to swat Jeongin off of him. The younger boy moved even farther behind him, his arms tightening around Jisung like a cobra constricting its meal. “Fuck off,” Jisung yelled, swinging first a fist and then a foot behind him, trying to catch Jeongin’s side. “Let me beat your ass!”

 

“ _Let_ you?” Jeongin laughed right in his ear. “You shouldn’t have stepped into the rink if you wanted a goddamn punching bag.” He widened his stance, preparing to throw Jisung to the floor again.

 

_‘Cause I’m the baddest gunslinger in the west._

 

Jisung wasn’t about to get tossed aside by someone else tonight. His powers raced towards his fingertips. He reached out a freezing hand, grasping for Jeongin’s arm or shoulder or head. All he needed was skin contact.

 

_Hey outlaw, follow me outside._

 

Jeongin was prepared. Or maybe Jisung was just predictable. Jeongin stooped low for a better center of gravity and then tossed Jisung head and heels over his shoulder. Jisung had barely hit the mat, wasn’t even completely sprawled out on it, before Jeongin was practically crawling on top of him and pinning him to the floor. “I warned you.” The trainer grabbed him by the hand. “If you don’t fight fair, I break a finger.”

 

That was all the head’s up he gave.

 

_And keep your fingers on the trigger while we put you under._

 

The snap of broken bone could be heard even over the song’s loud second chorus.

 

The pain was instant. A bolt of lightning searing everything it touched. Stars exploded across Jisung’s vision and he would have screamed bloody murder if Jeongin hadn’t slapped a hand over his mouth to muffle the sound.

 

“I don’t care what the fuck you do out there on the street,” Jeongin growled into his ear, “but you’re not going to ice anybody in here. Not in _my_ gym. Understand?” To add insult to injury, he pushed Jisung’s face into the mat. “You came to me to learn to fight. So learn to fucking _fight_.”

 

Jisung couldn’t even get angry. The pain was too much. It obliterated him. It blacked out his vision completely, fractured everything into pieces like he was peering through a kaleidoscope. He squeezed his eyes shut and sucked in a deep breath.

 

Fuck. It felt like his hand was actually on fire.

 

He swore he could smell the skin burning.

 

_Welcome to the gun show. Tonight we get wild._

 

At long last, Jeongin climbed off of him. “You’ll be fine,” he sang out as if he hadn’t just inflicted minor torture. “Don’t be a fucking baby.” He strolled away, casually stretching and rolling the kinks out of his neck.

 

If there was one thing Jisung wished he could do at that moment, it was run up on the dude’s exposed back and drive something long and sharp through his spine. Watch the blood spill. Knock him to the floor and sing _you’ll be fine_. Do a little high note at the end just to be cute. Instead, he curled into the fetal position and cradled his right hand, trying his hardest not to cry like a wuss right then and there. Shiiiiiiit. He fucking hated pain. He’d been in enough pain today to last a lifetime. He forced his eyes open and looked down at his hand. His ring finger was disgustingly crooked, plump from swelling and turning purple and disgusting. Fuck. Just looking at it made him want to hurl. Jisung swallowed hard and shut his eyes. The mat swayed beneath him like he was onboard a ship at sea. Fuuuuuuck. He reached through the pain, digging past layer after layer of it until he’d gotten to the inner pieces of himself. He used all the sense he had left to shove his powers up his arm and out into his hand to numb the pain and repair the fracture.

 

“God-fucking-dammit,” he choked out, the words all covered in spit and the taste of bile.

 

The bridge of the song tumbled in. The guitars shrank back. No longer as violent. The drums took over. Thrashing like a dying, struggling animal. _It all comes down to a single moment._

 

Jeongin leaned against the ropes, not even paying attention to him anymore. “Hey, Felix. You wanna finish what we started? Best two out of three?”

 

“Hey, fuckface,” Jisung cried out, lifting his head. “We’re not finished!”

 

“Really?” Jeongin glanced at him over his shoulder. “You look pretty done to me.”

 

Jisung glanced down at his right hand. Already, the swelling was going down and the color was returning to his digit but the agony still lingered. Fuck! Talk about suffering. Even with the ice in his veins, the pain signals were still exploding in the center of his brain. “We’re through when I say we’re through.” He pushed himself to his feet, blinking away the spots in his vision.

 

“You can fight Felix instead,” said Jeongin, waving a dismissive hand.

 

It was like being slapped across the face. Fight the newbie? What an insult!

 

“I’ll try my best,” Felix called out cheerfully, already starting to climb back up into the rink.

 

_The strong will fight and the weak will run._

 

An idea occurred to Jisung then. He could take this guy down swiftly and make himself feel better after losing so much today. “Okay then,” Jisung acquiesced. He got to his feet, clenching and unclenching his right hand. His finger felt fine. Numb but fine. All of its little pieces were back in place and, really, that was all Jisung cared about. “I’ll swing first.” The words were hardly out of his mouth before he ran forward. He was on top of Felix in seconds and jabbed right at the man’s unprotected chest.

 

Felix backed away. He coughed, turned his head and spat towards the edge of the rink.

 

From the other side of the ropes, Jeongin asked, “Jisung, did you just _hold back_?”

 

What the fuck?

 

Before he had the chance to question Jeongin on such a ridiculous allegation, Felix was rushing him. Jisung threw up his guard just in time. Felix came at him with a swift right hook that made Jisung’s forearm go numb then he followed it up with a knee to the side that Jisung was too slow to react to.

 

“What the fuck,” Jisung said aloud. It was all his brain had been screaming at him.

 

Jeongin shrugged. “I said the guy was new to the gym. Not new to the game. Keep up!”

 

_Slide the bullet in the barrel._

 

Jisung attempted to focus on the music pounding down on his head from the speakers. He tried to lose himself in the drums and guitar. It was like sinking into a warm bath. He was able to put a bit more thought into his actions now, as if listening to music slowed time down to the tempo of the song.

 

He rushed Felix again but this time with purpose instead of savagery. He threw a hook high just to make Felix block high and used the brand new opening down low to knee Felix in the gut. Then he went even lower to sweep kick the boy’s left ankle, throwing him off balance and sending him sideways to the floor.

 

From the sidelines, Jeongin clapped. “You’re finally listening, Jisung. Focus! Mind that gap.”

 

Jisung stepped back just in time to avoid the kick Felix lashed out at him with as he rolled onto his feet.

 

Felix stuck his pretty pink tongue out and swiped it across his pretty pink lips. Jisung imagined that they would look so much better stained red with a bit of blood.

 

 _Let me see you count to ten then draw your guns!_ Maria’s voice carried the last note long and loud and cruel. Distorted guitars backed her up as the breakdown crushed everything in its path.

 

The combatants rushed each other. A dangerous game of chicken until Jisung backed off at the very last second. Felix punished him with a heel to the bicep. A spin kick. Another heel to the elbow. Jisung’s right arm tingled from the assault and he spun away from Felix’s swinging fists, holding out a hand to parry a hook that would have taken his nose clean off. He had to throw Felix’s advantage. Knock things neutral again. Jisung timed it just right and high-kicked Felix just beneath the armpit. The move threw the guy off-balance and he staggered backwards, buying Jisung precious breathing room.

 

“Nice, nice,” Jeongin exclaimed. He narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing the combatant’s every move. “Tighten that stance, Felix. Jisung, keep those arms up.”

 

Both of them made adjustments to their posture before rushing each other down yet again.

 

 _Showdown!_ The guitars reached a fever pitch. Noise, noise, beautiful noise! Exploding everywhere. Fireworks of joyful sound.

 

Jisung lost his advantage almost instantly.

 

Felix slipped past him and snaked an arm under Jisung’s left armpit and flattened his hand to the back of Jisung’s head, partially immobilizing the blue-haired man as his left arm strained in its socket. “You’re so fucking hot.” Felix’s voice just barely cut through the sound in Jisung’s ears.

 

“Huh?” Jisung hadn’t been expecting that. He let his guard down completely.

 

Felix kicked the back of Jisung’s knee, dropping him to the ground. He had his other arm wrapped under Jisung’s right arm and behind his neck in a second. Jisung gasped for breath at the sudden strain on his arm and neck, the full nelson hold forcing him to hold still. Felix pulled Jisung back against his abdomen and Jisung’s stomach fluttered with surprise as it dawned on him that it was Felix’s hard dick pressing flat into the base of his spine. Felix lowered his voice. “Soon as you got in the rink, as soon as I saw you, I wanted to fuck you.”

 

Jisung said the only thing that made sense to him. “I have a boyfriend.”

 

Felix brought his mouth right next to Jisung’s ear and when he spoke, his voice had devolved into nothing but dark and dangerous bass. “Silly rabbit. I’m not trying to keep you.”

 

The guitars blurred into a maddening cyclone of fury. _May the best man win!_

 

“Hey,” Jeongin shouted over the volume of the music. “Get him on the mat if you want that hold to count.”

 

It took no effort from Felix at all to flip the both of them over, shoving Jisung’s chest to the mat and his dick between the cleft of Jisung’s tiny little ass cheeks. “My place or yours,” Felix wondered.

 

The vocals continued to cut through the maddening onslaught of sound. _May the best man win!_

 

Jeongin counted down from ten, marking the seconds until Jisung was out of the match.

 

Somehow, Felix’s voice managed to roll even deeper, dropping into pure, liquid sin. “Shit. You’re going to make me cum in these shorts.”

 

_Come on, cowboys._

 

Jesus. Not even Woojin spoke to him like that. Jisung almost gave in and pushed his hips upwards to meet Felix’s slow grinding but he got a hold of himself. It took some doing but he remembered what was important. He swung a leg out for leverage and then, with all of his strength, rolled sideways to get out from beneath Felix’s weight. He kicked Felix in the shin hard and the man howled in pain and dropped his hold. It wasn’t much of a door but the opportunity was there and Jisung went for it. He peeled himself free of the man’s arms and then climbed on top of him and pinned Felix to the mat in his own brutal hold, leaning more of his weight than he needed to on Felix’s shoulder. “I’m not going to cheat on my boyfriend,” he snapped.

 

He didn’t even wait for Jeongin to finish counting out the match before he stood up and left the rink.


	7. Pretenders by Fire From The Gods

“Hey, hey,” Jeongin taunted. “You chickening out?”

 

Jisung fumed. He grit his teeth so hard that his gums hurt. “What?” He balled his hands into fists at his sides and it took everything--fucking _everything_ he had--not to rip loose his powers and flood the gym in ice. Chickening out? He was a lot of fucking things but a _coward_? Hell to the fuck no. “You don’t know jack shit,” said Jisung. 

 

Jeongin wasn’t at all intimidated by the acid in Jisung’s voice if the smirk across his face had any say.

 

Jisung wanted to rip his ugly face off and wear it like a mask. 

 

This was so fucking frustrating! Nothing was going right. He couldn’t have anything! Not one goddamn thing. He was doing everything he was supposed to but, motherfuck, he couldn’t pull a win out of his ass if it was already hanging halfway out. “I’m not running. I’m just... through. Exhausted. Do you know how long of a day I’ve had? Shit.” 

 

Jeongin wasn’t moved. “Does the poor baby wanna cry?”

 

No. No no no. Fuck no. Of course not! Never in a million goddamn years. “Fuck off, Jeongin!”

 

“One day,” Jeongin stated, wagging a finger. “One day you’ll learn anger won’t get you anywhere.”

 

“Yeah, right.” Over the years, Jisung had discovered that anger was an _amazing_ fuel. Keep the flame low and it could burn hot and even for hours or days or weeks, illuminating his way forward. Turn the gas up high and anger could blaze so fucking bright! So fucking hot. It could scorch anything and everything it touched. It could reduce even the toughest of obstacles to nothing but a pile of goddamn ash. It could do all of those spectacular fucking things but Jisung was… tired. Not even anger could make him leap back across the rink and continue the fight and that was saying a lot. So he bent at the waist to squeeze between the ropes.

 

Of course, all Jeongin saw was someone throwing his advantage to walk away with his tail between his legs. “You sure you aren’t running? Looks like you’re chickening out to me.”

 

The words dug trenches across Jisung’s skin. Drew blood. Jisung stopped halfway beneath the ropes to turn his head and stare Jeongin down. Jeongin didn’t flinch. Didn’t budge. Jisung swallowed hard. “I wouldn’t fucking dare run.”

 

Between them, the tension sizzled.

 

Felix picked himself up off of the mat, swiveling his shoulder in the socket to stretch out the muscles. “You know you wanna get back here and finish what we started.” He waddled slowly to the edge of the rink and it didn’t take a genius to spot the guy’s half-hard dick tenting the front of his gym shorts, gently swinging back and forth like a pendulum. “Best two out of three?”

 

“Fuck off,” Jisung snarled. “Especially you.”

 

This was the kind of shit he hated. Having all of this anger but not having anything to set fire to. Not knowing what the fuck to do with it all. Not being able to _unleash_ it. 

 

Sure, his powers could freeze everything in here frozen solid, but his blood oath with Jeongin, that silly little promise about not freezing anyone in the gym, held a surprising amount of weight on Jisung’s conscious. It was one promise he wouldn’t intentionally break, as simple as it would be to do. “You don’t want to fucking mess with me, dude. Not after the day I’ve had.”

 

Felix grinned and continued to approach him. “You’re just scared.” He at least had the sense to keep it above the waist when he waved a hand at himself and added, “Of all this.”

 

 _Yeah, right_. Jisung tightened his grip on the ropes, wishing it was Felix’s throat instead. “Fight someone else.”

 

“You’re really gonna be like this,” Jeongin asked. “After making all of that fucking ruckus and interrupting everything, you’re just gonna… be like this?” He waved a hand in Jisung’s direction, his eyebrows scrunched upwards in disgust. 

 

Felix added, “At least finish the match.”

 

It would be so easy, Jisung thought, to fucking rush him down and smash his face into the mat. Repeatedly. Instead, he resumed pulling himself through the ropes and then hopped off of the rink and down onto the gym floor. If Woojin were here, he’d probably applaud Jisung for taking the high road or some other bullshit like that. Fuck. There was Woojin. It dawned on Jisung that, in the last twenty four hours, random strangers had expressed their desire to fuck him more plainly than his own year-long partner had.

 

Ain’t that bout a bitch?

 

Jisung raised the back of his hand to his nose to disguise the sniffle and then started across the gym to the locker room.

 

“Oh, come on! Don’t be that way,” Felix shouted at Jisung’s back. “Come back! I’ll take it easy on you. Loosen you up a bit first.”

 

“Fuck off,” Jisung yelled without looking back.

 

For fuck’s sake!

 

“Who does he think he is,” Jisung grumbled as he walked. He didn’t think twice about shoving people out of his way if they didn’t see him coming. Every curse thrown in his direction was met with a raised middle finger. “Trying to fuck me right on the mat? Goddamn. The nerve of this bitch.” Now that he was giving himself time to think about it, he had to admit that the idea of it was kind of hot. No. Not kinda. It was _so fucking hot_. Being all sweaty and beaten up and sore and bloody and shit, in nothing but gym shorts and wrist guards, fucking raw and fast right where everyone could see... Fuuuuuuck. What a fantasy. What a goddamn dream come true. But Felix wasn’t Woojin. And Woojin didn’t box. Jisung frowned. Then his mood lightened. He could still put Woojin in the shorts and gloves. It could be a little dress up. A little roleplay. Maybe it would heat things up between them a bit. Give Woojin the ‘warmth’ he kept going on and on about. “Fuck!” Jisung kicked at a trash can as he passed it and it let out a hollow, metallic thud as it spun around. “Fuck Woojin.”

 

It had been a year! A whole goddamn year. Hadn’t Woojin gotten used to the cold yet?

 

Felix shouted something else at his back. Jisung glanced over his shoulder to see the man slide beneath the ropes and follow after him but the distance was too great and the music was too fucking loud for Jisung to hear anything that was coming out of his mouth. Jisung turned back around and kept walking. He doubted it was that important. What could the guy possibly have to say to him that he actually wanted to hear? Jisung ran a hand through his pale blue hair. It was soaking wet and stringy from the sweat he’d worked up in the rink. He should hit the showers but, really, he just wanted to _leave_ . Get away. Go somewhere else. Anywhere. Jisung pushed open the men’s locker room door and stepped inside. The place was humid and uncomfortably warm from the showers. It was smelly and a bit more crowded than it had been like five fucking minutes ago. It was sevenish in the morning so the gym rats were filing in, squeezing a workout into their schedule before they headed out to work or whatever it was peasants did during the day. Most of the guys getting changed didn’t even bat an eyelash as Jisung stomped past them, bloodied and bruised and pissed the fuck off. Good. If someone gave him one wrong look right now, he would not hold back. Fuck. Who was he kidding. He was too fucking fatigued to stay pissed. He was a lighter out of fluid, unable to ignite even the smallest spark. “Shit shit shit,” he chanted as he approached his locker. Absolutely nothing was going right today. He couldn’t even _win_ without it feeling like he’d lost! Jisung had come all the way out here to this stank ass gym to let loose a bit. Unwind so he could go back home and fall the fuck asleep. But this whole entire day had been like a long round of bad sex: all motion but no fucking release.

 

He was bored of it. He’d never be satisfied like this and he had no idea what he could do or where he could go to feel... better.

 

Jisung swung open his locker and peered inside. 

 

All of his fucking clothes were ruined. Woojin still had his jacket, his shoes, so he hadn’t been left with much. At the bottom of the locker, his shirt was a burgundy shitstorm thanks to all of the spilled blood and his jeans were ripped to shreds and not even in a way that he could pass off as _fashion_ . “Oh hell,” he muttered. Nothing pissed him off more than fucked up clothes. He’d rather toss cash straight into the river than spend it on clothes just for them to wind up looking like this. His gym shorts were the only clean things he had left, he realized. He would have to go back to his apartment now. He would _have_ to face Woojin and be reminded of the long, sexless week they’d had. Woojin pushing him away. _I just want to be warm_.

 

Jisung was a goddamn failure. An unattractive, unappealing failure of a man.

 

Someone nudged him, getting him out of his thoughts.

 

Jisung glanced up, tensing and ready for a fight, but it was Felix standing next to him. The guy wore a shit-eating grin on his face because clutched in his fist was a white, clean shirt. “Looks like you need this.” Felix smirked.

 

Wordlessly, Jisung snatched the shirt out of Felix’s extended hand. The crisp scent of laundry detergent clung to the cotton. Wispy. Lavender. Jisung slipped it on over his head and shoved his arms through the sleeves. It was a size too small for him and clung to his shoulders and chest like a second skin. He returned his attention to the contents of his locker, grabbing his headphones and pulling them on around his neck.

 

“Jesus fuck. Look at this mess. What… What the fuck?” Felix stuck his head in Jisung’s locker. He pinched the sleeve of Jisung’s filthy old shirt between two fingers and his whole face contorted at the coppery stench of dried blood. “You get into a fight or something? Must have been quite the brawl.”

 

“You should see the other guys.”

 

Felix laughed. “Everybody says shit like that.” He unfolded the shirt and examined it as if trying to look at all of the blood splatters across the material. Squirrel, Jisung’s newly-acquired combat knife, fell from the folds of the shirt and landed with a clatter on the locker room floor between their feet. The serrated edge of the blade was still red and sticky from the time it had spent lodged into Jisung’s abdomen.

 

Jisung stooped down to pick up Squirrel and casually spun it around his red, rubbed-raw knuckles. He repeated, “You should see the other guys.”

 

At long fucking last, Felix’s slimy grin faltered. His eyes went wide as shit clicked over in his head. He hurriedly tossed the bloodied shirt back into Jisung’s locker and took a careful step back.

 

There it was, Jisung thought. He relaxed the tiniest bit. _There_ was the fear. At least he could still get that kind of reaction out of people without fucking it up.

 

Felix ran a gloved hand over the top of his buzzed scalp. “Look, man, I didn’t want to start any shit. I just thought you were hot and wanted to know how you take dick.”

 

Jisung rolled his eyes. He started to raise Squirrel up towards homeboy’s face.

 

“Here’s your phone, Jisung.” Jeongin walked up, not knowing what he was interrupting. “Be careful where you point that thing. You’ll put someone’s fucking eye out.” He pushed on Jisung’s wrist until the knife was lowered to Jisung’s side. “Here.” He held out the phone and Jisung took it with his free hand. Jeongin’s tone shifted to something crueler. “Touch my stereo again and I will break both of your goddamn wrists, you son of a bitch.”

 

“Whatever.” Jisung rolled his eyes. Knife in one hand and phone in the other, he started to leave the locker room but Felix put a hand on his chest to stop him.

 

Bold.

 

“We’re going to my house after this,” Felix told him. A hopeful smile spread across his freckled face and Jisung almost thought the sharpness of his canine teeth was… cute.

 

But… “I won’t last through a party.” Jisung stepped back to break the physical contact.

 

“Wouldn’t call it a party,” Felix pressed. He pointed at Jeongin and then at himself. “Just us two.” 

 

Jisung narrowed his eyes suspiciously. Where had all of that earlier fear gone? He wondered if Jeongin’s presence was giving the dude some courage.

 

“Hey, I know that look.” Felix threw up both of his hands. “It’s nothing crazy, man. We’re just going to smoke a little something. Dealer’s newest strain. Smells like fucking poppuri. You want in?”

 

“You’ve found a new smoke buddy? Is that what this is?” Jisung leveled his gaze on Jeongin.

 

Jeongin shook his head. “Come on, man. Didn’t I tell you I’d never replace you?” 

 

It didn’t sound too convincing. Or too fun. Jisung was tired enough that the weed would probably put him straight to sleep. It would be a fucking waste.

 

Jeongin spun in the combination to his locker, retrieved a towel and started to blot the sweat from his face and neck. He never completely turned his back on Jisung though, always keeping his eyes on the knife in Jisung’s grip.

 

“Who knows what the hell we’ll get up to.” Felix tried to sweeten the deal with a stretched out, lizard-like smile.

 

Jisung didn’t even give it a second thought. “Fuck off,” he told them, ignoring their pleading stares. “And get the hell out of my way before I put you out of my way.”

 

Felix stepped aside.

 

Jeongin pressed his back up against the lockers to give Jisung room to pass. “If you ever change your mind,” he said brightly, “shoot me a text and I’ll send you the address.”

 

✁✃✁

 

The way home was already long without Seungmin giving him a ride but the walk was made longer by the fact that Jisung was tired and... didn’t really want to go home anyways. 

 

Shit. 

 

He hated feeling this icky and gross on the inside. Exhausted but with no source of comfort. All of this shit was pent up inside of him. He’d reached the limit for the amount of bullshit he could take in a day. Fuck. What good was home if there would be no peace? He still considered himself pissed off at Woojin and, as luck would fucking have it, they couldn’t stay too far out of each other’s way in their shitty little one-bedroom apartment. 

 

If Woojin didn’t want to fuck, what was the point of being close to him? What was the reason for having him around?

 

Above him, a mild, icy rain fell from the cloudy morning sky. The last remnants of the storm he’d produced earlier.

 

Jisung stepped down the snow-covered sidewalk. Barefoot. His toes filthy and calloused. He was in nothing but gym shorts and a t-shirt in the winter weather but he couldn’t even feel the cold. Other people could, though. It was all they felt. He ignored the stares from passersby. He ignored his reflection in shop windows and car side mirrors, knowing that he would only see his own bare, ugly, crooked fucking face. He wouldn’t be himself again until he got a new mask. Until he could cover up the atrocity that stretched from his chin to his forehead.

 

He raised a hand to the side of his head and brushed damp locks of hair behind his left ear.

 

Shit shit shit!

 

No wonder he was getting all sensitive and pissy and having _emotions_. He needed to play some music. Something loud and brutal to fill up all of the empty space inside of his heart and head.

 

He had just plugged his Beats into his 6% battery phone when the screen lit up with a phone call. The name across the screen informed him that Fuckface was calling. Rolling his eyes, he answered the call and raised the phone to his ear. “What do you want, Seungmin?”

 

“Dude,” the guy answered. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for a fucking eternity. What’s your fucking deal? Where are you?”

 

Jisung pulled the phone away from his ear and opened the notification tab at the top of the screen. Wouldn’t you know it? He had 19 missed calls from the fucker. “I went to the gym,” he replied. His own patience amazed him.

 

Seungmin must have sensed it, too. “You’re not yelling at me.”

 

Jisung growled low in his throat. “Did you want me to fucking start?”

 

Seungmin fell into silence.

 

“Where’s Woojin? Are you with him?”

 

“No. I’m at home. I dropped him off like… an hour ago? Fuck. Is that the time? Yeah, an hour ago.”

 

Jisung clenched his fists. Not in anger… but in worry. “Did he say anything?”

 

“About what?”

 

“About me?”

 

“No. He said next to nothing. Just promised he’d spot me gas money and then got out of the car.”

 

“Is… Is he okay? After everything?”

 

“I’m not a doctor,” answered Seungmin.

 

Jisung frowned. If he could reach through the phone and strangle Seungmin, he would.

 

“But,” Seungmin cut in quickly, “he said he would take care of himself. Eat and bathe and catch up on sleep and all of that. I offered to take him to the hospital because he looked pretty beat up but he refused to go anywhere but home.”

 

The tiniest smidgen of relief found its way inside Jisung’s chest. He was grateful that his boyfriend was alright. He was just about to do something batshit crazy like _thank Seungmin for his help_ , when--

 

“Why are you with him?” Seungmin broke the silence. “I’ve always wanted to ask.”

 

“What the fuck?” Jisung buried what little gratitude he’d just scrounged up and easily summoned his anger to his side like it was an old friend. “You trying to start shit, jackass? I know where you live. Remember?”

 

“That right there is why I’m asking. It’s always anger first, logic never.”

 

“Get to the point, Seungmin.”

 

“That is the point. Right there, Jisung.”

 

Jisung was almost dizzy from the tornado of his thoughts. “That’s just the way I am.”

 

“Exactly! Why are you and Woojin together when you’re… you?”

 

“I fucking knew it,” Jisung growled. He hawked up a loogie and spit. The liquid froze solid before it even hit the sidewalk. “I knew you wanted to fuck me, too. Goddammit, Seungmin.”

 

“You narcissistic bitch. That’s really what you fucking think?”

 

“You fucking want me to yourself, don’t you? I’m too much for you. You know that.”

 

“You’re completely missing the point.”

 

“I’d never fuck you.”

 

“I’d never want you to. Goddammit. That’s not why I’m fucking asking this, you asshole.”

 

“Then what the hell do you want?” Jisung could feel his powers slipping free. The wind picked up, gusting down the street and kicking up debris. Knocking over a trash can. Sending someone’s open umbrella sailing into the sky. “Why are you questioning me and Woojin?”

 

“Can’t you see it,” Seungmin’s voice got serious on the other end of the line. Quiet. Low. Hardly audible. “Can’t you tell, Jisung?”

 

“Tell what? See what? Stop speaking in fucking riddles.” 

 

“I’m saying that he’s only stayed with you all of this time because he’s scared shitless of you.”

 

It was like the entire world had crumbled from beneath him. Jisung felt his stomach churn. Felt his heart stop beating for a long, perilous, life-threatening moment. He was falling. Tumbling. But that couldn’t be right because he was walking. The emotion bubbling up in him was far stranger than anger. It was fright. For the first time in years, for the first time ever, Jisung felt... a chill. “Shove it up your ass, Seungmin,” he hollered. “Fuck you. Fuck you! You don’t know shit.”

 

“I’m just saying,” Seungmin said casually. As if he hadn’t just ruined Jisung’s entire life.

 

“Fuck off, Seungmin. Forever. I mean it. The next time I see you, I will kill you. That’s a promise.” He didn’t even wait to hear Seungmin’s reaction. Jisung hung up. Then he let out a desperate, emotional scream that echoed off of the nearby buildings and made the crowd on the sidewalk around him split open like an egg and give him a wide berth as they passed him. 

 

Panic settled in.

 

His breathing became heavy. His fingertips grew numb. His body shook like he was freezing but that was absolutely impossible. The only thing keeping him from hurling his phone at the ground was the fact that all of his music was on it. All of his life-saving tunes. His whole life.

 

No. No no no no no. He wasn’t going to let Seungmin get to him. He wasn’t going to let that jealous little bitch worm his way inside of his head! Seungmin didn’t know jack shit. He saw how close Jisung and Woojin were and he wanted that kind of shit for himself. Right? That’s why he said something like that. That’s why he dropped such a bomb. Trying to destroy what was fucking perfect. But now that the words were inside Jisung’s skull, he couldn’t help but give them time and attention. Woojin cooked Jisung breakfast and let him know when a sick ass shoe collab was in the works. Woojin bought him clothes that didn’t suck. Woojin stayed up with him half of the night to marathon TV shows and then maybe fuck a bit when the shit on screen got boring. That wasn’t fear. Right? That was love, right? Spending time with each other. Learning about each other. Knowing each other. That wasn’t fear... Right? He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure and that scared him. Now Jisung wanted to go home even less. He wanted to see Woojin even less because, fuck, what if Seungmin was right? What if Jisung looked at Woojin and saw fright in his beautiful eyes? Shit. No. Nononononono. Jisung would legitimately go to the ends of the earth for Woojin. He’d climb down all nine levels of hell for him. Hadn’t he just spent all night getting Woojin away from those hired fucking goons with guns? Hadn’t he just risked his life for the man? Woojin had nothing to fear… but what if he did? Fuck. He didn’t want to go home!

 

But he couldn’t bring himself to go anywhere else.

 

Jisung’s anxiety crawled over his skin like he’d just walked through a spiderweb. Above him, the weather worsened. The sky darkened further and the icy rain that fell turned to sheets of sleet. Around him, the crowd of commuters panicked as the weather turned. This hadn’t been in the forecast. 

 

He bit his bottom lip, shoving people aside as he walked. Dammit. He needed some music. He had to chase all of this disgusting softness out of his head. Like a nicotine addict fiending for a cigarette hit, Jisung fumbled with the plug of his Beats, both of his hands shaking so damn bad he couldn’t even slot them into his phone on the first try. Or the second. Or the third. Fuck!

 

He managed to get the device connected. Pressed the wrong icon on the screen twice before successfully tapping the music app. He waited for it to load, feeling his pulse thunder in his ears as he reached his fucking limits. He needed his music. He needed his music. If he was left alone with his own thoughts for too much longer… 

 

Finally, the app loaded. He tapped on a random artist. A random album. He didn’t care who or what this time. He just needed something loud and frantic and noisy in his head. He’d try anything.

 

He pressed play. The opening chord of a song thundered out of his Beats. Hallelujah! He grabbed his headphones, ready to pull them on over his ears.

 

The screen of his phone went black. The battery was completely spent for the second time that day.

 

“Goddammit,” he cried out. He wanted to scream. He wanted to fight, fuck, destroy, die. Anything would feel better right now than wanting to fucking _cry_.

 

None of those things felt like viable options, though. So he ran.

 

He ran and ran and ran. The wind howled at his back and he so desperately wanted to dissolve into mist but he couldn’t find the focus. His lungs burned from sprinting. His head was a cloud of static.

 

Jisung didn’t know how, but he made it home.

 

Sore. Drained. Little more than a walking shell.

 

He got up the rickety flights of stairs, made it down the smelly hallway and arrived at their door at the end of the hall. He punched in their passcode and the mechanism trilled cheerily as it unlocked for him. Jisung let himself in and swung his foot out only to remember far too late that he had no shoes on to kick off. In fact, there they were. Sitting on the floor, soaking wet and covered in grime from Woojin’s trek through the snow. A clunky pair of black boots sat next to his ruined sneakers. He wouldn’t be caught dead in shit like that. Maybe Woojin had found them somewhere.

 

That was all of the thought he gave it.

 

He shoved the door shut behind him and glanced around.

 

The apartment was quiet. Still. Dark. The shadow of the building next to theirs kept the morning sun from shining through the living room windows. Maybe Woojin wasn’t home? Maybe he’d be able to shower and crawl into bed without worrying about anything? His eyes adjusted to the dark. Now he could see that there was a light in the house. One of the lamps in their bedroom was on, the glow seeping out from a crack in the nearly-shut door, creating a tiny, yellow rectangle of light on the wall at the end of the hall.

 

Dammit. Woojin _was_ here. 

 

Jisung dreaded seeing him. The idea of having to look at him with Seungmin’s words haunting him filled him with the kind of horror he didn’t think he’d ever have to experience. If he confronted Woojin about their feelings for each other or whatever, the two of them would either fuck like their lives depended on it or Woojin would run away because he was… scared. The fact that either possibility was highly likely… 

 

“Fuck,” Jisung hissed. Nothing anyone else had said to him had ever bothered him like this. Nothing! So why couldn’t he stop the echo of Seungmin’s voice in his head? It was like he was losing his goddamn mind. Doing an awful job of trying not to think about it, he went to their tiny kitchenette, yanked the plug of the toaster out of the wall and replaced it with the plug of the phone charger that always sat on the counter. He jammed the other end of the cord into his cell phone and figured that now would be the time to face what he’d been running from. “Woojin?”

 

He didn’t hear anything at first. It didn’t sound like the shower was running, so maybe Woojin was asleep?

 

Jisung turned away from the kitchen counter and raised his voice a little. “Woojin?”

 

“Ahh, fuck.” It was a low, guttural groan, almost too quiet to hear, but Jisung recognized it as his boyfriend’s voice. “Just like that. Goddamn.”

 

Jisung crossed the hardwood floor towards the hallway. Paused. Waited. Now that he was paying attention, he realized it wasn’t as quiet in the house as he first thought. He could hear it now. Faintly. Muffled by the heavy wood of the bedroom door. Heavy panting. The rustle of bedsheets. The creaking of their ancient mattress.

 

“Fuck. You’re so fucking hot,” Woojin moaned.

 

Then a completely different voice came from the other side of the door. Soft and singsong. “You close, baby?”

 

Woojin whimpered out a, “So… so close.”

 

Jisung swallowed hard.

 

Not again.

 

Not again.

 

Not! Again!

 

Jisung lifted his shirt and reached a hand into the waistband of his gym shorts, pulling Squirrel from behind his back like he was a gangster on a show. He gripped the knife by the handle and walked down the hallway, not even bothering to disguise the noise of his footsteps. The journey felt both too short and impossibly long at once. His anger blazed high like water added to a grease fire only for the flames to dwindle immediately, leaving him feeling empty and debilitated before he’d even passed the bathroom. 

 

How many times had this been now?

 

Jisung pushed open their bedroom door, surprised yet not surprised to see Woojin in bed with someone who wasn’t him. In bed with someone who was _warm_.

 

His boyfriend lay on his back, naked and handsome, sprawled across the sheets. His head was thrown back against the pillows. One hand gripped the headboard in an attempt to not end up with a concussion. The other twisted lube-stained sheets in a closed fist. Woojin’s chest was damp with sweat and his fat dick bounced pathetically against his stomach as some man hovered over him, furiously fucking into Woojin’s soft ass. 

 

“Fuck,” Woojin groaned, squeezing his eyes shut.

 

“You gonna cum for me?” The man who wasn’t Jisung exhaled shakily. “You gonna cum without touching yourself?”

 

“Yeah,” Woojin confessed. “You’re so good. So good.”

 

The rhythmic slap of skin against skin must have kept both of the men from hearing the door swing open. Neither of them looked up even as Jisung crossed the room and stood at the edge of the bed, watching some other man’s dick pump in and out of Woojin’s hole.

 

Jisung propped a knee on the bed for leverage and then leaned forward. Left hand squeezed the tip of Woojin’s dick. Right hand pressed Squirrel’s serrated edge to the soft, sensitive skin just above Woojin’s nutsack. 

 

“Holy shit!” The guy fucking Woojin cried out.

 

Jisung ignored him. He only had eyes on his boyfriend. “Did you forget what I said last time?”

 

Woojin opened his eyes and startled at the sight of Jisung hovering over him. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!”

 

“Didn’t I say I’d chop your fucking dick off if I caught you again?” Jisung pressed Squirrel the tiniest little bit harder against Woojin’s skin.

 

“Who the hell are you? What the fuck?” The stranger asked, unsheathing himself from Woojin’s hole.

 

The sudden loss of friction, the sudden emptiness, made Woojin hoist his spine up off of the mattress and hiss, “Fuck fuck fuck.” But he wasn’t shouting because he’d gotten caught. What had just started couldn’t be stopped. “What are you--” He let out a shaky, whiny little bitch of a moan and then came. Right then and there. Warm, white jizz oozed out from between Jisung’s fingers like melting ice cream, dripping onto Woojin’s stomach. The man shivered and shook as his orgasm hit and he threw an arm over his face in what might have been shame until he’d completely emptied himself inside of Jisung’s fist.

 

The stranger caught sight of the knife in Jisung’s hand and backed away. “What the fuck is happening--”

 

“Shut up,” Jisung screamed at him without taking his eyes off of Woojin.

 

Woojin relaxed back onto the bed and tried to roll away from Jisung’s hands but that just made the blue-haired man tighten his grip. “Didn’t I tell you?” Jisung screamed. “That I’d slice your fucking dick off if you cheated on me again?”

 

“You’re a fucking lunatic,” the stranger gasped out and then attempted to make a run for it.

 

In one fluid movement, Jisung sat up straight, spun around and hurled Squirrel through the air.

 

The knife whistled as it cut through the air. The blade passed a mere breath in front of the retreating stranger’s face before lodging itself in the wall near the man’s hand. He shrieked in fright and then stumbled backwards, tripping over his own ankles and landing on his ass on the floor.

 

“I said, shut up,” Jisung yelled at the dude. 

 

The temperature in the room dropped as if someone had thrown open a window to let in the frigid outdoor air.

 

“Jisung,” Woojin sat up. “Please. We can talk about this.”

 

“We have talked about this.” Jisung whirled back towards him. “We’ve talked about this again and again but you won’t fucking listen to me. I saved your fucking life today but you repay me by fucking someone else!”

 

“Jisung--”

 

“Shut up!” Jisung howled. He let go of Woojin’s softening dick and took a moment to smear the man’s cooling, hardening jizz across the sheets. They were indoors but a low wind came howling down the hall.

 

“For fuck’s sake, man, what the fuck is going on?”

 

Jisung leapt from the bed, crossed the length of the room in a single bound, stooped at the waist and punched the dude straight across the mouth. “Shut the fuck up, you bastard,” Jisung growled. “My boyfriend just cheated on me with you. You don’t deserve to fucking speak.”

 

The guy opened his mouth and sucked in a breath to say something.

 

Jisung popped him across the jaw with his other fist, sending the dude’s head sideways and leaving a thin trickle of blood dripping from his bottom lip. “Shut up shut up shut up shut up!” 

 

“Please, Jisung.” Woojin crawled to the edge of the bed. It was cool enough in the room now that his breath left his mouth in a fog. He crossed his arms across his chest for warmth. “You don’t understand.”

 

“You’re right. I don’t.” Jisung waved a hand at the stranger sprawled across their bedroom floor. “His dick is just as small as mine.”

 

The guy on the floor put a self-conscious hand over his cock, blocking it from view.

 

“Calm down, Jisung,” Woojin urged him. He attempted to put a hand on Jisung’s frozen cold shoulder.

 

“I _am_ calm!” He wasn’t. Not in the slightest. Jisung swatted Woojin’s hand off of his body. “How could you do this to me?” He felt foolish when he had to add, “Again!?” Ice started to creep across the floor from between his toes.

 

The stranger got on his hands and knees and made to crawl for safety. Just as he got to the threshold of the door, Jisung caught him with a fistful of his hair. The dude let out an undignified squawk, trembling like a frightened animal.

 

Woojin seemed frantic now. Frightened. “Jisung, please.” He stepped forward, attempting to put his arms around the man.

 

“Fuck off,” Jisung told him, shoving Woojin away. 

 

“Don’t hurt him,” pleaded Woojin. “Please, Jisung. Calm down. Let’s--”

 

“Shut the fuck up.” The words sounded far more dangerous and far more real because Jisung had spoken them instead of shouted them.

 

Woojin clamped his mouth shut.

 

Jisung glanced down at the guy he had in his grip. Even with a bloodied lip and snot dripping out of his nose as scared tears pooled in the corners of his eyes, Jisung could see his handsomeness. And he hated it. He hated that the guy was so good looking and could so easily, so quickly, get Woojin flat on his back in bed. Jisung hawked up a loogie and spit in the dude’s face. “Fuck you.” It would be so easy, Jisung thought, so so so easy to just pry Squirrel out of the wall and shove her through this dude’s eye. Carve lines across his cheeks. Anything to mar his beauty. Destroy his attractiveness. Make him as ugly as what Jisung saw in the mirror. “Fuck you.” 

 

Ice began to crawl over the man’s toes and fingers. He began sobbing uncontrollably as the cold crept in.

 

From the other side of the room, Woojin wailed, “Jisung!”

 

Fuck fuck fuck.

 

“Fine!” He let go of the stranger’s hair and stood up. “I’ll go. Did you hear what I said? I’ll go. I’ll leave,” he snapped. “You two can go back to fucking. How does that sound? Sounds good, huh? It’s what you fucking want, huh?”

 

Woojin opened his mouth and inhaled sharply.

 

“Shut the fuck up,” Jisung beat him to it. “Since you’re going to cheat on me and make me fucking watch, I’m going to cheat on you and make you fucking watch. I’ll make you fucking watch! You hear me?” He pointed to the small computer desk in the corner of the room. The laptop where he’d watched Woojin’s hostage video sat on it, dusty and untouched since that morning. “You’re going to sit on that goddamn chair and you’re going to watch me nut in someone else’s ass. You’ve been breaking my heart since day one. It’s about time I broke yours.” He had been loyal to Woojin for a goddamn _year_ but if that wasn’t going to get him anywhere, he was just going to play the same sick and twisted game his boyfriend did. “I’m going to bring some other dude home and fuck him in our bed like you do all of the goddamn--”

 

“Jiji,” Woojin attempted.

 

Jisung raised his hands to his own hair and pulled hard enough for white spots to dance across his vision. He grit his teeth at the self-inflicted pain. Softly, despite wanting to scream and just coat the entire room in a blanket of snow and ice, he said, “Don’t you dare interrupt me again.”

 

Woojin surrendered. His shoulders sagged. He sat down on the edge of the bed. Frowning. His wet hair in his eyes. His chest heaving with his every shivering breath. He lifted a hand towards his lap and absentmindedly wiped dried jizz off of his stomach.

 

Jisung had one last message for the man. “You better be here when I get back.” He stomped towards the bedroom door and grabbed hold of the knob. “If you dare leave this house, you better stay gone.” He stepped out into the hall and slammed the door shut behind him.

 

Wind swirled around his body, making his hair and clothes dance. With each heavy step he took down the hall, a slim pile of snow was left behind where he’d placed his feet. He dragged a hand along the wall as he walked and left a long, jagged smear of ice across the wallpaper. His hand felt empty without Squirrel but if he had his hands on her right then, he would only do terrible things. Things that he might actually come to regret.

 

He arrived in the kitchen and snatched his phone free of the charger. It wouldn’t have much juice at all but, really, he only needed it to stay on long enough to send a few text messages.

 

A face carved its way in his mind. Slim, feline eyes. A pouty, pink mouth. An upturned nose.

 

Felix.

 

The right man to Ruin Everything with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @[CuriousCat](https://curiouscat.me/TheSwingbyJHF)


	8. The Unknown (Strength) by In Hearts Wake

Jisung was so happy that he could motherfucking die. Right here on the spot! Goddamn. Nothing could be better than this. It was cliche as hell but he wanted to bottle up this emotion--this one moment--so he could suck it up his nostrils and take the hit straight to his brain whenever he needed a boost. Anything to grab hold of this feeling and never let it go. Anything to keep it. Fuck, if he could never let anything else come after this and spoil it, it would be the fucking best. “Jesus fuck,” he hissed, squeezing his eyes shut as his head swam. His brain was in the washing machine being sloshed around on the spin cycle. When the dizziness passed, he opened his eyes again, making bluish little spots dance across his vision. “I feel like I’ve got eighteen toes.” He held up his bare right foot, wriggled his toes and tried to fucking count them. 

 

Jisung, Jeongin and Felix were on Felix’s swanky white leather couch in his swanky fucking living room in his swanky fucking apartment sixteen stories in the air above some swanky fucking Gangnam neighborhood. Felix hadn’t given them much of a tour, thank God. He’d just led them to the living room and went to his bedroom to grab the stuff. Jisung had only really seen one or two rooms, but it was still the most luxurious house he had stepped foot in since breaking out of the prison his parents called a home. The three of them were still in their colorful gym shorts, sweaty t-shirts, ankle wraps and wrist guards. Their bodies still emanated the hot stench of a good workout but, now, there was the additional scent of the weed. The warmth of the apartment and the warmth of piling up next to each other on the couch had pushed the chill of winter out of their bodies. Well, two of their bodies. One of them would always run cold.

 

“Goddamn,” Jisung said. “I have twelve toes.”

 

Jeongin nudged Jisung’s ankle with his foot. His bare toes digging into Jisung’s skin. “Hush,” he shushed him. He was the type who just liked to get shitfaced in silence. Fucking vibe to nothingness.

 

Jisung, on the other hand, liked to fill his highs with noise. It was a miracle they still smoked together. “Fuck’s sake,” he grumbled. “You _sure_ there’s no other fucking shit laced in this?”

 

“I’m sure,” Felix told him. His grin made his bloodshot eyes crinkle up. “You’ve just been huffing on it like your lungs are made of steel.” He leaned over and pried the blunt free of Jisung’s hand so it wouldn’t singe his couch.

 

Jisung was so sideways out his mind that he would put his hand on the Bible and _swear_ he was watching Felix’s low voice physically vibrate through the air like ripples across the surface of a lake. “I wish Woojin smoked. All the fucking stupid shit he’s into but he won’t fucking inhale.”

 

“What is he into,” Jeongin asked. He leaned against Jisung, eyes all curious.

 

“He’s got this fucking massive dick but he won’t use it. He can only get off when he knows all of it is just swinging uselessly between his legs.”

 

“I meant what drugs he’s into, but okay,” said Jeongin. He leaned back against the couch and ran a hand through his skunk-colored hair. “I know a few hookups.”

 

“He’s got a size kink,” Jisung continued like he hadn’t heard. “But like… the opposite of how the Lord intended.” Jisung ran a hand over his own crotch, absolutely positive that Woojin only enjoyed sex with him because of his below-average size.

 

Felix frowned. “Just because he’s got a big dick doesn’t mean he _has_ to do the fucking.”

 

“Oh, I know,” Jisung complained. “I know. I know. Trust me. I haven’t had a dick up my ass since--” Chan. “--since I moved to Seoul.”

 

“Fuck.” Felix twisted around to look at him. He held two fingers in front of his mouth and obscenely licked between them. “You inviting me in?”

 

Jeongin groaned loudly. “You know, Felix… I came over here thinking _we_ would fuck but here you are trying to fuck my friend instead. Ain’t that some shit.”

 

“I’m not trying to keep him,” Felix muttered. “And I’m not trying to keep you, either. You can be next.” He glanced over at Jisung. Talking about ‘keeping’ had reminded him of something. “I thought you had a boyfriend? Thought you weren’t going to cheat like a fucking goody two shoes?” He passed the blunt to Jeongin.

 

Jisung wasn’t going to give all of the details, but-- “I want to fuck you now _because_ I have a boyfriend.”

 

Felix’s face scrunched up in confusion.

 

Jeongin at least had a smidgen of an idea of the chaotic typhoon that was the relationship between Woojin and Jisung. “What the hell did he do now, man?”

 

Fucking hell. Fucking fuck! Why did it hurt like new every single time? “He cheated on me so I’m cheating on him.” Jisung looked up. He met Felix’s gaze from across the couch. “He made me watch so I’m going to make him watch.”

 

“Watch?” Felix’s pupils were blown about as wide as a tire. “Did he agree to that?”

 

“I didn’t agree to walking in on him riding somebody else’s shrimp dick. Fuck. Fuck! I really should have chopped it off. Just sawed right the fuck through it when I had it in my hand… but, goddamn, it’s such a pretty dick. Have you seen it? You should see it. It’s amazing. I couldn’t fucking ruin it. It’s fucking gorgeous. Like art. God. I should chop it off and make them display it at the motherfucking museum.”

 

Jeongin raised an eyebrow. “You okay? Should you even have more of this?” He tentatively held the blunt out to Jisung but changed his mind and passed it to Felix without taking his eyes off Jisung. “You should like… drink some water or some shit. Fucking take a nap, my dude. You are _tripping_.”

 

Felix exhaled smoke and it danced around his head like he was a tree on fire. “If you really want me to fuck you, then I will. I mean, you’re fucking fine as shit, dude.”

 

“I’m ugly as sin,” Jisung corrected. “Do you see me? Do you see my fucking face?”

 

“I do and I’d still nut all over it. You gonna let me fuck you?”

 

Jisung didn’t answer him right away. A day ago, he would have said ‘in your fucking dreams’ without hesitation. No. He wouldn’t have said anything at all. He’d have just punched the dude across his jaw. Made his nose fucking bleed. Blacken both his eyes and knock a few teeth loose. Now, though, after all the bullshit, he was genuinely, positively, considering Felix’s offer. All he could picture in his head was Woojin sprawled out on their shared bed at home, taking somebody else’s dick. Nutting to somebody else fucking the shit out of him. It hadn’t been the first time but it was definitely going to be the last. Jisung would make damn sure of that. He would make Woojin watch just like Woojin had made him watch. “Who says I won’t be fucking _you_?”

 

“Should I go,” Jeongin questioned. He had the misfortune of being seated between the two hornballs. He glanced at one and then over at the other. “Should I just fucking leave? Am I fucking cock? Am I blocking cock? Am I-- Fuck! Am I _cockblocking_?”

 

“You’re not fucking me,” Felix said at last.

 

“Want to wrestle for it,” Jisung suggested. He was joking.

 

Felix, however, took it and ran with it. “Naked,” he pondered, “and all oiled-up?”

 

“The hotter the better,” agreed Jisung. He would do whatever it took to give Woojin the warmth he so badly fucking craved.

 

“I should leave.” Jeongin attempted to stand.

 

Jisung grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him back. “We’re just fucking around. Goddamn!”

 

“Are we?” Felix sat up.

 

“We should be.”

 

Felix put the blunt between his lips, pinched it between his thumb and index finger. He sucked on it slow and held the white smoke in his lungs. Then he leaned forward, right over Jeongin, sitting up enough to hover above Jisung. He brought their lips ridiculously fucking close.

 

“Hey,” Jeongin complained. He sank down into the couch cushions to give Felix a bit more room. “You’re going out of order. Puff, puff, pass. I’m next.”

 

“You skipped him the last time.” Felix propped a hand up on Jeongin’s shoulder for leverage and stared into Jisung’s eyes.

 

Jisung opened his mouth, granting permission.

 

Felix parted his lips into a wide o-shape and the thick weed smoke poured out of his mouth so fluidly it looked like liquid. Jisung leaned closer still and sucked the smoke into his lungs like it was oxygen. He reached out a hand and dragged his palm over the top of Felix’s scalp. The dude’s buzzed-short hair tickled Jisung’s skin. No. It almost fucking _hurt_ like a million tiny razorblades. A million fucking acupuncture needles. But the weird sensation just made Jisung run his palm up towards Felix’s forehead and then back to the base of Felix’s neck to yank him even closer. Nearly mouth to mouth. Felix hummed, moaned, and then blew more smoke past Jisung’s lips.

 

Fearing he was missing out, Jeongin leaned forward, completing the triangle. He inhaled sharply through his mouth as if trying to suck the smoke out of Jisung’s cheeks. He didn’t get much, though, and whined at the back of his throat as he watched Jisung zip his lips shut.

 

Jisung laid there, holding in the smoke and holding it in and holding it in and pushing his forehead against Felix’s and holding it in and fighting his urge to cough the whole while. When he couldn’t bear it any longer, he turned his head and exhaled, forcing it out of his lungs and directly into Jeongin’s face.

 

Jeongin inhaled. Leaned close. Inhaled again. Anything to suck in some smoke. In his haste, their noses brushed.

 

For a moment, they stayed still like that. All huddled together. Buzzing together.

 

“Your hands are so fucking cold,” said Felix, pulling away. He halfway straddled Jisung before twisting around to sit back on the couch.

 

Now Jisung was the one sitting in the middle. “I’m always fucking cold.” He pried the blunt loose from Felix’s grip, put it between his lips and inhaled.

 

“You’re skipping,” Jeongin complained again. “Goddammit. I’m here, too.” 

 

“It’s my fucking weed that you’re smoking for fucking free,” Felix shot back.

 

Jeongin pouted. His face was the tiniest bit flushed from anger and his eyes were so big and full of defiance that his gaze was like being Spartan kicked down a goddamn well. “Why do I always fucking get left out? Am I not cool enough? Am I not hot enough?” Jisung was still inhaling but Jeongin snatched the blunt from his hands so that he could have a turn. 

 

Jisung let him take it. He was stoking the fires too high as it was. He turned his head and exhaled the white smoke. He curled his tongue and shaped his lips and controlled his breaths so that he could morph the smoke into intricate patterns, watching it all drift towards the ceiling. It was an odd sensation to feel like he was on fire but not actually be _burning_.

 

Jeongin exhaled smoke shakily. There was the faintest sheen of sweat on his skin like he was about to spontaneously combust. Either smoke was coming out of his ears or Jisung was fucking seeing things. Jeongin said, “Is that why you were so unfocused during the match today? You’d caught Woojin cheating on you?”

 

“Why fucking ask if you already fucking know?” Jisung slapped a hand over his chest as he coughed.

 

“You shouldn’t let anger control you,” mumbled Jeongin.

 

“Anger is all I have. It’s all I’ve fucking got. All the shit I’ve been through? The nightmares that fucking torment me? Anger is the only thing that hasn’t let me down in this world.”

 

Jeongin bit his bottom lip and took a long time to decide what to say next. In his hesitation, Felix leaned over, pulled the blunt from his hand and stuck it between his own lips. Jeongin said, “Maybe you think it’s anger but... it’s probably fear.”

 

Jisung brought their faces close. He lowered his voice to the sound of a frozen lakebed cracking beneath a traveler’s boots. “What the absolute fuck do I have to be afraid of?”

 

“The truth,” Jeongin replied, not breaking eye contact. Not blinking. Not breathing. It could have been his last moment on this Earth, he knew, but he would not back down.

 

Jisung felt too separated from his own body to even react. To even summon the very anger he was speaking of. He leaned back onto the couch. “Can’t I just be high and horny in peace? Fuck!”

 

Jeongin pulled the blunt from Felix’s hand. 

 

“Don’t fucking fuck up the turn order,” Jisung chided. 

 

“I’m next,” Jeongin corrected.

 

“We’re sitting different,” Jisung huffed. “Smoke order’s different now, too.” He took the blunt next. The back of his thighs and calves burned slightly in the places where his skin felt Velcroed to the leather upholstery of the couch. When he inhaled, his vision tunneled and he became acutely aware of how hard he was gnashing his teeth and clenching his jaw. It took a great deal of effort to relax the muscles. When he exhaled, his world grew pinker and pinker as Felix leaned his freckled face forward to suck in the smoke.

 

Jeongin reached out and snatched the blunt from between Jisung’s fingers. He put it between his own dry, cracked lips and sucked hard, the cherry brightening in the near-dark of Felix’s spacious, dimly-lit living room. The blackout curtains kept the awful brightness of the morning at bay.

 

When Jeongin had his fill, he passed to Felix. “Almost to the roach,” Jeongin commented. “Just about.”

 

Felix took it anyway. 

 

There was rap music playing on the sound system but it had been forgotten. There was a movie playing on the television but it had been forgotten. There was an array of freshly-microwaved snacks laid out on the coffee table in front of the couch but it had all been forgotten. The bottle of Jack Daniels, though, had not been forgotten and Jeongin leaned forward to grab it by the neck, hoist it up and suck directly from it. The noise of him swallowing made Jisung’s skin crawl. The dude chugged it then sat the bottle back down on the table and wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. His whole body tensed as his throat caught fire. “So you two are really gonna fuck, huh? I’m really not gonna get any ass out of this?”

 

Jisung rolled his eyes.

 

“I told you,” Felix huffed. “You’re next.”

 

“This isn't for fun. It’s for revenge,” Jisung reminded them. “You two can fuck all you want after this.”

 

They settled into a buzzed, floaty quiet that should have been far more fun than it was. Like stepping foot on a cloud only to pass through it and freefall. The ground came up on Jisung mighty fast. It threatened to fucking sober him up. “Give me that.” He snatched the blunt from between Felix’s clenched teeth and then laid down across Jeongin’s lap to take a drag. He could feel Jeongin’s racing pulse beneath the sweaty-hot skin of the guy’s thighs.

 

“So what... What do you want me to do,” Felix asked after a long time.

 

Jisung looked up at him. “Just come with me back to our place and get right to fucking. Simple as that.” 

 

Felix struggled with his words. “Any… special positions? Or like… any special requests?”

 

Like a doctor administering a prescription, Jisung succinctly recited, “He likes it when I take him from behind. Ass in the air. Face in the pillow.”

 

“Wait… Wait…” Felix pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re not putting your dick up my ass.”

 

“If I beat you in wrestling, I am.”

 

Jeongin’s hand carded through Jisung’s glacier-blue hair. The light, tingly sensation of it was like feeling flowers grow out of his scalp.

 

Jisung pulled the blunt away from his mouth and parted his lips. 

 

Obediently, Jeongin bent over to bring their faces close.

 

Jisung shotgunned the smoke straight into Jeongin’s mouth. When he had exhaled it all, he raised a hand, held the blunt out towards Felix. “If Woojin’s waiting like I told him to, we just fuck in front of him. Nothing special. Just revenge.”

 

“That’s so fucking weird, dog,” Jeongin told him. He had to pause. He turned his face away from Jisung’s, coughing up smoke. When he recovered, he turned to meet his friend’s eyes. “I’ll never understand how you two work. You constantly fight and tear each other apart yet you’ve been together… what did you tell me? A fucking year? Wow, a goddamn year.”

 

“I gave him an ultimatum,” Jisung said. He shut his eyes. His head felt stuffed with cotton. His chest felt like it was being half-crushed by a great weight. He could barely feel his fingers. “He can either leave the apartment and never fucking come back to me or he can be a bitch, sit there and watch me fuck somebody else.”

 

Felix scratched his forehead with his thumb, thinking hard. Smoke trailed up and up and around his slim, chiseled face. “You mean he’s going to like… actually sit and watch the whole time? Like we’re a fucking porno?”

 

Jisung still had his eyes shut. “What? Got performance anxiety or something?” He hoisted his legs up onto the couch and pinned Felix’s legs down with his thighs.

 

Felix made a weird noise at the back of his throat. “It’s just fucking weird, yo. You’re fucking talking about it like it’s nothing but this is fucking weird. It’s not… normal at all.”

 

Jisung had heard a similar sentiment. From… somebody. Seungmin. Yeah, him! Seungmin had yapped on and on about… fuck, Jisung couldn’t even really remember, the guy was so unimportant, but Seungmin had said something really similar. Something about not being normal. About not being… Fuck it. Whatever. He couldn’t exactly recall anything beyond the spiky feeling those words left in his ears and down his neck. “Jesus fuck,” he groaned. “If you aren’t up for it, I’ll get somebody off the street or some shit.” He opened his eyes and turned his head a tad so he could look at Felix on the couch. Despite Felix’s earlier complaining, his erection was clearly visible. It tented the front of his gym shorts and he made absolutely no move to readjust it so it wouldn’t stand at attention so obviously. Jisung turned his head a bit more in Jeongin’s lap and shut his eyes again. He got no joy out of this. Not even a smidgen. No fire burned at his insides. No arousal. He didn’t want to fuck Felix because he thought the dude would be fun in bed. He didn’t even want to do it because Felix was like… a little cute. Fuck no. If anything, nutting up the guy’s ass would be _punishment_. He would break his own heart with every thrust. Like priests who whipped themselves when they sinned, when they believed they had not been pious enough. Jisung was just going to fuck Felix because he hadn’t been good enough for Woojin. Hadn’t been good enough to keep him.

 

“I guess I’ll do it. It’s cool…” Felix acquiesced after a very, very long time. “We can shower up, change clothes and head over to your place… to fuck… in front of your boyfriend. Like… that’s a normal thing to do.” He shook his head. “God… What if he, like, starts jerking off or something?”

 

“I’ll kill him,” Jisung said smoothly. Innocently. “I’m punishing him not pleasing him. He better not even touch his dick. He better not even get hard or I swear to fucking God.”

 

“Okay, you need to like… get some fresh air or something,” Jeongin mumbled. “And no more fucking weed for you today.”

 

Felix handed Jeongin the blunt. They had smoked it almost down to nothing. Only paper and cinders left. Felix freed himself from beneath Jisung’s legs and smacked him on the thigh. “Whatever, dude. Your asshole better be fucking _amazing_. I better have the best nut of my goddamn life. You better be so good I fucking tell you I love you when I cum. After all of this fuck shit, it just better be good.” Felix stood up and made his wobbling way towards the hallway where the bathroom was.

 

“Who says you’re doing the fucking?” Jisung called after him but his voice didn’t have much fight left in it. He’d been dry for so long. He wondered if he even still could take dick since Woojin had never used his for anything.

 

For a while, Jisung just laid there. Listening to Jeongin inhale and then exhale and then inhale and then exhale. Listening to his own slow breaths. Listening to the obscene lyrics of the song playing through the Bluetooth speakers, the words describing in primal detail how to finger pussy.

 

The white noise nearly lulled him to sleep.

 

Jisung’s existence felt smaller than his body. Like he was taking up far more space than he was allowed. His lungs were hot, but only comfortably so, not to the point of burning. Lying across such an expensive couch felt like he was being swaddled in a blanket. Hell, it felt like he’d been shoved right back up into his mother’s womb, safe and free and protected. His body tingled like he could feel every individual atom of the world glide across his fucking skin. Jeongin’s hand was still in his hair and, if Jisung concentrated, he had a feeling he could count every individual strand as it was gently pulled. It had taken ages to get to this point and now the high would not let him go. He was torn between feeling heavy and feeling light. Feeling like he was in heaven and feeling like he was being spit-roasted over a bonfire in hell. He was halfway between experiencing pain and experiencing peace. This kind of high nearly scared him. He wasn’t afraid of heights but he was _up so high_ . His insobriety made every sound bounce off the curved back of his skull. Made his every minor movement feel like he was flinging himself into the frigid, soundless vacuum of outer space. The high made every breath feel like he was swallowing mouthfuls of fucking disgusting salt water. Made it feel like his ice-cold heart was about to _beat beat beat beat_ out of his chest, fracture like glass and pierce his skin in jagged peaks. The high also… comforted him, somehow. Soothed him. It rubbed the spike-covered angles of his resentment down to smooth nubs. It quieted the flames of his anger to harmless embers. It unwound his mind so that Woojin’s betrayal was no longer his first and only thought. 

 

Everything inside of him was now let loose. Unanchored.

 

Seconds may have passed. 

 

Or minutes. Or longer.

 

He may have slept. Or maybe he hadn’t.

 

Then Felix was hovering over him, shaking him to alertness. “It’s your turn for the shower,” he said, tossing a clean bath towel over Jisung’s face.

 

✁✃✁

 

The drive across town felt like a flight through rough turbulence.

 

Jisung was still high as fucking balls and Felix was probably right up there with him. Felix drove his coupe aggressively quickly with an allergy to the turn signal and a love/hate relationship with the brakes. 

 

They had left Jeongin at Felix’s place as Jisung was absolutely positive that he could strip, lie on his back, teach Woojin a fucking lesson and then have Felix kicked out all before noon. To defend his pride, however, Felix had insisted he could last for longer than forty-five minutes but Jisung didn’t even want this to last _fifteen_ minutes. Fifteen seconds! He just wanted to go this far to break Woojin’s heart so that they would be even. If everything worked exactly how he planned it, he and Woojin could be together again. Just like before. Just like normal. Maybe they’d do something wild like hug each other but they would certainly fuck for half the afternoon, order takeout and maybe do the fucking laundry together or some shit. Jisung didn’t know. He just wanted Woojin back. All of Woojin. Not just tiny, broken bits of him. 

 

“Did you say something?” Jisung slurred, blinking himself awake.

 

Felix frowned. “You must be hearing shit, dude. I haven’t said anything for like… two blocks.”

 

Jisung must have fallen asleep. Felix had cut off his music to switch to the radio. That was definitely something that had to change. Jisung switched the system from SATELLITE to USB, found a song he liked on his phone, pressed play and waited in anticipation for it to start. Slowly, progressively, the distorted opening bars growled through the speakers of Felix’s car. Then the guitars kicked in at full volume. 

 

 _To all victims and witnesses of fear_ , the vocalist screamed at a low, rumbling octave. _Your brave hearts, they will prevail._

 

Ahhh. Bliss.

 

It was like he was drowning, reaching out a hand and immediately having someone grab hold and drag him to the surface. 

 

 _They won’t find defeat_.

 

Jisung turned his attention out the window and held a hand over his eyes to reduce the daytime brightness attacking his eyeballs but that really just meant the rest of the world passed by him as nothing but out of focus shadows and mixed-together colors. “Fuck. I want to die,” Jisung groaned. Because really, honestly, truly, that would be a better option than cheating on his boyfriend. “I want to fucking die.” Goddamn it, why was he such a fucking wuss?

 

Felix huffed. “Don’t die yet. We still have to fuck.” That was the most important thing. 

 

_Born on the battlefield,_

 

_Your past remains unknown._

 

The rhythm changed. Losing its melancholy chaos and brightening, quickening to something worthy of a two-step.

 

“Come on, man. Get your head in the game. I’ll treat you good.” Felix reached out and gripped Jisung’s thigh with a surprising amount of possessiveness despite the small size of his hand.

 

“Fucking shit, dude,” Jisung grumbled, peeling Felix’s fingers off of his skin. “Stop acting like I _want_ to do this. I mean… stop acting like… Fuck! This is just revenge, alright? I doubt I’ll even nut. I’ll probably be thinking about _him_ the whole goddamn time.”

 

“What a fucking way to encourage me.” Felix squeezed the steering wheel with both hands.

 

_Bringing back all the days_

 

_You’ve been through._

 

The GPS cut through the music blaring through the speakers and told Felix to hook a left at the light. He glanced in his side mirror all of half a second before cutting across two lanes of traffic to follow the instructions, gunning the accelerator to make the light as it turned yellow.

 

_Finding life so hard to value._

 

The sudden movements of the car tossed Jisung from one side of his seat to the other and made him feel car sick. The nausea ripped holes in his high and soured his mood. He rolled down the window and inhaled a lung full of the chilly morning air. It barely helped. Dammit. He just wanted to be sober already! This shit wasn’t fun anymore. He turned the volume up on the pounding bass drums and chugging guitars. 

 

 _If I could take away the pain_ , the vocalist beseeched, the guitars crescendoing behind him.

 

“You okay with this?” He asked, pointing to the radio. He was so used to Seungmin always opening his fucking mouth and saying something shitty every ten goddamn seconds.

 

_There’d be more to inherit your last name._

 

Felix raised his voice a bit to be heard over the screaming. “It’s not bad.” The GPS told him to merge right and get on the main avenue. He did so. Ignoring or not hearing the irritated horn blasts from the car behind them. “I listen to dubstep all the time and the shit’s kinda the same, you know? I mean… not fucking exactly but the way the song is put together. You know… it’s all build up, build up, build up and then the drop. It’s all the fucking same. Just different instruments.”

 

It was probably the smartest, wisest thing Jisung had ever heard anybody say. “Finally someone who gets it. Finally someone who _understands_. Maybe I’ll suck your dick and mean it.” He grit his teeth as another wave of car sickness made it feel like his brain had dropped out of his head and was now sloshing around in his stomach. Fuck. He never fucking got car sick! What was this shit? Where did it come from? It’s not like this was his first time riding somewhere while high. Or was it just because Seungmin drove so fucking slow all the goddamn time? Was that it? “I’ve been meaning to ask,” Jisung shouted when he felt like he had his head on straight, “how do you know Jeongin?”

 

“I just wanted to switch gyms. My old one was getting all gentrified. Getting rid of all the contact sports programs to make room for more fucking cycling classes. I did some digging. Found that old dump. Legit signed up for it the other day and Jeongin was the shootboxing trainer.”

 

That was it? “Oh,” sighed Jisung, a tad disappointed but also a tad relieved. Jeongin truly wasn’t trying to replace him.

 

_Where are you now?_

 

The melody changed again. Speeding up. Getting choppy and crunchy like gravel. The noise both fueled and combatted Jisung’s anxiety.

 

“How do you know Jeongin,” Felix shot the question back at him.

 

“I needed somebody to teach me how to fight. Not just self-defense… but how to really fucking throw down. How to really fucking hurt someone with my fists.” As fun as icing bitches was, he didn’t always have the humidity he needed to use his powers when he was starting shit with armed goons at a nightclub. “When all else fails, it’s just good to know I can really mollywhop a bitch.”

 

“I’m gonna regret knowing the answer to this but… why do you need to know how to fight like that?”

 

“Because I’m me,” replied Jisung like that explained everything. “And since I’m me, there is always gonna be someone out there who wants to fucking test me.”

 

Felix risked taking his eyes off the road to stare long and hard at Jisung. “That’s not the real answer, is it?” 

 

“You’re damn straight!”

 

Felix put his eyes back on the road, following the navigation off the main avenue and down a hilly street, past an outdoor market, past a university. 

 

The weather was quite nice with a cloudless, blue sky and a clear view of the distant mountains on the other side of the buildings. Jisung kind of hated how bright and sunny it was. He was cheating on his boyfriend for fuck’s sake. It should be raining. It should be nighttime. The weather should have been as dark and gloomy and tormented as he felt.

 

Felix shouted over the music. “If Jeongin’s teaching you how to fight, what was that knife for?”

 

Jisung tuned back into the conversation. Knife? Right. Squirrel. The bloody little fucker. “It was a souvenir.” That was all the answer Jisung felt like giving because the real answer was long and layered and complicated and he didn’t have the functioning brain cells left for that shit. Maybe if Felix asked him later. Maybe if Felix was around later for him to ask. “A gift from an old buddy.”

 

Felix didn’t press the issue even though he knew there had to be so much more shit to the story. Instead, he swung the car down a side road and parked at the side of the street when the GPS announced that their destination was on the left. He cut the car off and the music stopped abruptly. 

 

It had been loud enough to leave Jisung’s ears ringing. He pressed on his ear lobe until the high-pitched ringing faded out and he could hear the musical ding of the automatic doors of the convenience store behind them. Jisung liked that feeling, though. Of having music being pounded into him so roughly and so deeply that his body was almost rejecting it. If he could just cram enough noise inside, maybe his body would run out of room and all of the bullshit would start leaking out of him. He just wanted to forget. Godfuckingdammit he just wanted to _forget_. He unhooked his phone from Felix’s stereo. “Come on up,” Jisung said, swinging open the passenger door. “He better still be up there if he knows what’s fucking good for him.” He stood up and stretched and then used his foot to shut the door. 

 

“What if he’s not up there?”

 

“Then there’s no reason for us to fuck.”

 

“Well damn…” Felix locked the car doors. “Wouldn’t it actually be okay to fuck if he left? Wouldn’t you be single then?”

 

“I don’t want to be single,” Jisung said flatly. “I only want to be with Woojin until the both of us fucking die.” To keep up appearances, he had borrowed one of Felix’s wool sweaters after showering at his place. Felix even found shoes that were big enough for Jisung. His gym shorts, though, he kept on, even though they looked tacky with everything else he was wearing. Even though they were stupidly impractical with all of the snow on the ground. He couldn’t bundle up too tightly. He couldn’t get too hot. He knew not to make that mistake again.

 

Jisung led the way across the street and into the building’s lobby.

 

Felix, finally acknowledging his place as but a small cog in the giant wheel of Jisung’s machinations, followed after him wordlessly.

 

Jisung crossed the tile floor of the lobby and pressed the call button for the elevator. The apartment building was no swanky Gangnam joint but it was affordable and somewhat clean and it had at least been constructed within the last decade or so. Meaning it wasn’t _terrible_. It was shit but it wasn’t falling apart. With a university so close, most of the tenants were students or young professionals just starting out in their career fields. With his bright blue hair, Jisung actually did not stand out too much at all from the crowd even though he hadn’t gone to school or had a paying job a single day of his goddamn life. 

 

His parents made sure to constantly remind him that he had been birthed with the sole purpose of being… _changed_.

 

Felix didn’t speak until they were shoulder to shoulder in the coffin-sized elevator, the machine shuddering and jolting as it climbed. “I felt weird about it before but like…” His gaze drifted up towards the ceiling. “Now I keep imagining your boyfriend watching me dick you down. I keep thinking of him watching me fuck you the way he’s never fucked you.” He looked over at Jisung, admiring his tanned skin and sharp jaw. “I didn’t even know I was into that shit until right now… Learn something new every day.” Boldly, Felix reached out a hand, caught Jisung by his chin and turned the man’s face towards him. “Fuck, I’m gonna dick you so good.” Felix pressed close, his hot breath on Jisung’s cheeks.

 

When Jisung realized what he was about to do, he put both of his hands on Felix’s chest and shoved him into the wall covered in promotional posters and advertisements, hard enough to knock the corkboard that held them up loose and to the floor. “What the fuck, dude. Don’t fucking kiss me.” He turned back around and faced forward as if he hadn’t just assaulted the dude.

 

Felix recovered his balance. “Dude, I’m about to-- We’re about to have sex!”

 

“So?” Jisung shot back. The elevator had reached his floor but the doors were taking fucking forever and a day to open. “You’re the one who keeps saying over and over that you don’t want to keep me. Why the hell do you want to _kiss_ me? Fucking disgusting.”

 

At last, the elevator doors opened. Jisung practically ran out into the hallway. His high was starting to leave him which meant, goddamn, he was getting hungry. He fished his phone out of his pocket, unlocked the device and pressed play. The song picked up where it had left off in the car. The turned-high volume of it flooded the narrow, empty hallway. The noise of the guitars and drums seemed to echo endlessly off the tile and seep into his brain. The raucousness of it kept the monsters in the back of his mind at bay.

 

_Older now, laid to rest._

 

_With six feet upon the chest._

 

“Fine, fine,” Felix shouted, running up behind him. He followed Jisung around the corner. “No kissing.” A playful smirk danced across his lips. He was surprising himself at how well he was handling Jisung’s temperament. “Guess we’re not cuddling, either. I won’t call you afterwards.” He risked giving Jisung a shove. “Hell, I won’t even toss you a towel when I’m fucking finished with you. How about that? That cold enough for you?”

 

“Shut up,” Jisung growled, but not because of Felix’s words.

 

They had reached the end of the hall. Jisung stood still in front of his apartment door, the one place where he should have felt safe, but some deep-rooted part of him, some instinct-driven beast that slept in his gut, had stirred awake and made him stand up straight, on high alert.

 

Felix started, “What’s your deal--”

 

Jisung simply raised a hand.

 

With that, Felix clamped his mouth shut.

 

Jisung punched his passcode into the keypad but the electronic door lock didn’t respond. No musical trill. Nothing. He tapped the four digit code in a second time, deliberately pressing hard on each button. The screen remained blank and unresponsive as if the machine itself had been fucked with. Jisung tried the door handle. It was unlocked and opened with barely a squeal of hinges.

 

Now Jisung knew something was wrong. He looked over his shoulder at Felix who bit his bottom lip. “You carrying anything?”

 

“Like… a weapon or something,” Felix questioned. He raised both of his fists in a boxing pose.

 

As if that would help. Jisung raised his hands, grabbed Felix’s fists and pushed them back to the man’s side. “I’m weapon enough.” He turned around, put his shoulder against the door and shoved it open so hard it banged against the far wall. He stepped into the foyer, clenching his fists at his sides and dragging a small portion of his powers to his fingertips. Nothing looked unusual in the foyer. No out of the ordinary footwear. No signs of damage to anything. But still, if he was a fucking wolf or something, his hackles would be standing on end. Jisung was about to tell Felix to stay outside but the dude had followed him. In fact, Felix was already stepping into the living room ahead of him.

 

Jisung caught him by the sleeve of his hoodie. “Stay behind me,” he commanded, “or you’ll fucking die.”

 

Felix laughed nervously but he obeyed the command and allowed Jisung to walk into the living room first. “Should we call the police?”

 

“I am the police,” Jisung said, which made no sense at all. He looked around. Jisung had been here just over an hour ago but it did not feel like... home. Nothing seemed to be out of place but that didn’t make Jisung relax. Even the music thundering out of his phone and filling up the entire apartment with noise did not make him relax.

 

_Born from the battlefield_

 

_Your past remains unknown._

 

Over the music, Jisung clearly heard the creak of floorboards down the dark hallway as someone heavy shifted their weight. There _was_ someone in his house, Jisung confirmed. Someone who wasn’t supposed to be here but who was here regardless.

 

The temperature in the room dropped steadily as Jisung unleashed more and more of his powers.

 

Felix crossed his arms over his chest. His breath left his mouth in a fog. “Did someone leave a window open in here? It’s warmer outside than it is here.”

 

“It’s me,” Jisung admitted. “I told you back at your place. I’m always fucking cold.”

 

Of course, Felix didn’t get it. “Huh? I’m talking about how cold it is here.”

 

Jisung ignored him. He just dug deep, grabbed hold of his power and brought it up to the surface. There were no windows open in the house but the wind was starting to pick up, gusting from the direction of the kitchen and knocking papers and small baubles off of the coffee table and the bookcase shelves. Anger, his good old friend, came rushing up at Jisung’s slightest command. “Who the fuck is in my house?” He took one step forward. And then another and another. The living room was empty. The kitchen was empty. Whoever was here was in the bedroom. Jisung popped the joints in his neck, preparing for a real fucking brawl. “I know you can hear me! I can fucking hear you walking.” He was _freezing_ now. Tiny little icicles hung from the ends of his blue hair. Patches of ice crawled over his legs. Frost began to cover the wooden floor beneath the shoes he was wearing. He stopped at the hallway, unable to see too far down it. 

 

Felix flicked on one of the light switches, and the yellowish incandescent glow flooded the hallway. “Dude,” he grumbled. “We shouldn't be handling this ourselves. What if they’re armed?”

 

“ _I’m_ armed,” Jisung declared. If Felix said one more goddamn thing, if he distracted Jisung one more time, he’d fucking throw the guy off the fucking balcony. He’d shut up then. “Who the fuck is in my house,” Jisung shouted. “This is your last chance. Step out now. If I turn that corner and see you, I’ll break your fucking teeth in.”

 

“Whoa, dude, whoa.” Felix backed up. It wasn’t even Jisung’s threat that had shocked him but the fact that tiny snowflakes were whirling around Jisung like he was the epicenter of a small blizzard. Snow was gathering on the floor now, white and powdery and oh-so-cold. “Dude, I’m absolutely fucking _tweaking_.”

 

“Shut the fuck up,” snarled Jisung.

 

“Whatever dude, I’m fucking… I’m fucking out of here.” There was the sound of the front door opening and slamming shut.

 

Good. Good. Good. Now there was no longer a reason to _hold back_.

 

Jisung let loose even more of his power. He solidified the moisture in the air above his left palm and forged a long, skinny pick of ice more than sharp enough to slice a throat. He stepped into the hallway. The wind circling around him started howling low as it gusted and thundered down the corridor.

 

Beneath all the wind, Jisung could still hear the song playing.

 

 _Your past remains unknown_ , the vocalist repeated, his words hardly audible. Jisung only understood what part of the song he was listening to because of the staccato of the syllables, because he listened to this song so fucking much he could only hear a split second of it and recognize it.

 

Jisung rushed forward. “I gave you a chance,” he raised his voice. “Now I’m putting your head through a wall!”

 

Someone stepped out of the open bedroom door right in front of him. “Jiji,” Woojin said calmly.

 

Jisung sighed in relief only to suck the sound right back down his throat.

 

Woojin hadn’t said anything, he had barely moved, but the look in his eyes spoke volumes. There was still someone else in the house.

 

Jisung tightened his grip on the ice knife and took one more step forward.

 

 _So burn this motherfucker_ … The song came to an abrupt halt. Not because Jisung’s phone had died from the cold but because the song itself had stopped. The guitars and drums and even the vocals retreated to dead silence to allow the simple, ambient sound effects of heavy breathing and the _chik-chik-chik_ of someone spinning the sparkwheel of a lighter, attempting to create flame. 

 

Someone else stepped into the hall right behind Woojin, holding a small black pistol to the side of Woojin’s head. 

 

“You,” Jisung growled out. “You!” Because of course!

 

 _...down!_ The vocals in the song suddenly came back in, angry and loud and defiant. The guitars rolled in heavy, like a towering ocean wave, dragging and dragging at everything like the strings themselves had caught fire as the musicians played.

 

“You motherfucker!” Jisung screeched. Common sense went out the window. He completely lost control over his power as his rage grabbed hold. Freezing wind gushed out of him before he could stop it. Before he could _want_ to stop it. “I told you I’d kill you next time I saw you! That wasn’t a fucking threat, it was a promise!”

 

Seungmin grinned. He stared Jisung down without trembling and shaking like he usually would. He looked… different. He’d shaved off that pathetic mustache and neatly combed his wild, grizzly bear hair. Gone were his frumpy substitute teacher clothes, replaced by the same slick, arctic camo gear the fuckwads at the hydroelectric plant had been wearing. 

 

Despite the situation, Jisung laughed. Because _of course_! “Boy am I going to enjoy snapping your arm in half,” he declared. “I’m going to fucking rip your tongue out. Fucking tear your fingernails off. Fucking squash both of your eyeballs! Fucking yank your spine out through your asshole!” The last word sent a horrendous gust of wind down the hall, knocking both Woojin and Seungmin stumbling.

 

Seungmin snorted, “Is that any way to greet an old friend?”

 

Shit shit shit shit shitshitshitshit. 

 

Jisung thought he hated his parents. He thought he hated the scientists and doctors who poked at him and prodded him with needles, injecting him with whatever the fuck. He thought he hated the butlers and maids employed at the Han mansion because they simply turned a blind eye to the fuckery he’d been forced to endure. He thought he hated Chan. He thought he hated Woojin. But no… No. None of that had been hate because _this_ was hate.

 

This.

 

Was.

 

Hate.

 

Jisung was so full of anger that tears sprang to his eyes and immediately froze solid, halfway blinding him. His heart thrashed in his chest and with each pounding beat, he saw less and less and less of the world around him until the only thing frozen into his vision was Seungmin’s ugly, smirking face. 

 

So softly that he couldn’t even hear the words inside of his own fucking head, Jisung said, “I’m going to kill you.”

 

Perhaps the blizzard winds had carried the whispers to Seungmin’s ears. Or perhaps he’d simply read Jisung’s lips. “Take one step closer to me and I will blow Woojin’s brains out.” He took the safety off on his gun and put a finger on the trigger as if to show his seriousness.

 

Jisung could get serious, too. He raised a foot as if to lunge forward.

 

“Jiji,” Woojin whimpered. His voice was like a soothing salve on a wound.

 

Jisung blinked. The world came into focus just enough for him to see Woojin’s terrified expression. His reddened eyes. The tears of fright slinking down his cheeks. The flush to his cheeks as he choked back a sob. 

 

“Jiji,” Woojin repeated, shaking his head furiously.

 

“This is all your fault,” Jisung yelled at him. “You shouldn’t have fucking stayed here. You should have--” He paused as emotion threatened to rip his heart out from between his lungs. “You should have left me when you had the chance!”

 

“Jisung,” Woojin cried out. He was so terrified that his knees gave way beneath him but Seungmin, with strength Jisung never would have guessed the guy had, yanked Woojin back upright with a hand beneath his arm.

 

“What the flying fuck do you want, Seungmin,” Jisung demanded. He tried to reel his powers back in but he was getting too emotional. He had let too much of it pour out and now it was impossible to stop. The snow beneath him had already reached past his ankles and a thick fog was starting to roll across the floor from the direction of the refrigerator. “What do you _want_?”

 

“Don’t you get it, Jisung?” Seungmin snickered. “Shit like this is going to keep happening to you until you take your ass back home.”

 

That was it. Jisung was going to fucking _decapitate_ him. He stepped forward.

 

Seungmin angled the gun towards the wall and fired. The _bang!_ was loud and clear even above the noise of Jisung’s storm.

 

Woojin squawked in absolute terror and the front of his pants went damp with piss.

 

Seungmin laughed like this was the most fun he’d had in a while. He put the gun back up against Woojin’s temple. Over the rushing wind, he shouted, “I’ve learned every single one of your fucking weaknesses, Jisung. You’re going to do what I say and you won’t dare lay a finger on me.”

 

Jisung only half heard him. He was too busy pushing his power into every fucking crevice of his body. He forced ice across the walls of the living room, blanketing the couch and the television and bookshelf and the floor beneath layer after layer after layer of sparkling snow. The temperature in the apartment had sank to subzero and even Seungmin’s harsh military training wasn’t enough to keep his teeth from chattering in the cold. 

 

Ice coated everything from the floor to the ceiling. Ice coated Jisung’s heart. Inside and out.

 

There was absolutely nothing in his world now. Only the ice knife in his hand and the place in Seungmin’s chest where he was about to put it.

 

“Hey,” Seungmin attempted to bargain, “if you do anything to me, won’t you hurt your boyfriend, too?”

 

“Does it look like I fucking care? I’m offing you, Seungmin. I’ll fucking paint the walls of this hallway with your blood and hang your intestines from the showerhead. I never fucking liked you and now I know why. You’ve been working for my parents all this time.” His voice snapped in half over the last word. He struggled to suck air into his lungs because his mouth and nose were clogged with snot and spit. He could barely fucking see because now the tears were _streaming_ out of him, everything turning to ice across his cheeks, everything burning despite how cold it was. Everything burning _because_ of how cold it was.

 

Seungmin working for his family made so much fucking sense. The guy had just showed up in Jisung’s life and clung to him like a fucking leech. If Jisung was short on rent, Seungmin spotted him cash. They shared meals. Jisung was always at his house using his high-speed internet connection and unlimited data. Jisung hated him but he also liked to keep Seungmin around. Not close… but around. But now Jisung knew that even that was part of the deception. Close but not too close. Near enough to monitor, near enough to be relied on, but not so close he’d be found out.

 

Jisung stepped forward.

 

“You better stay over there,” Seungmin yelled at him, losing his nerve. He waved the gun in Jisung’s direction but when the man did not slow his approach, Seungmin pointed the gun at Woojin’s temple again. “Stay over there!”

 

“No wonder you stuck around no matter what I fucking did or said to you,” Jisung thought aloud. “No wonder those armed mercenaries kept showing up no matter where I fucking went. No wonder you were always fucking there to help whenever a fight I got into turned sideways. You were always fucking watching me, weren’t you?” 

 

Seungmin grit his teeth so that he could speak despite his shivering. “If they had sent Chan in the beginning, you wouldn’t have let your guard down.”

 

Jisung was so far past angry now that he was calm. “No wonder my parents never fucking called me… No wonder those goons knew Woojin’s work schedule enough to snatch him off the street.” He took another step forward. “You were telling them everything like a snitching bitch.”

 

Seungmin grabbed Woojin by the shoulder and pushed the man between himself and Jisung. It was a cowardly move to use Woojin as a shield. “I’ll kill him,” Seungmin attempted to bargain. “Stay back or I’ll fucking shoot him.”

 

Jisung lunged forward, knife at the ready.

 

Seungmin shoved Woojin aside and brought his hand down hard on Jisung’s arm to deflect the attack that would have killed him. He elbowed Jisung in the chest and used the opening to free his own knife from the sheath at his waist.

 

Jisung danced out of the way of Seungmin’s knife thrust and then high-kicked the traitor in the ribcage. When that wasn’t enough to deter Seungmin’s advance, Jisung jumped backwards and then spun into a roundhouse kick. The hallway was almost too narrow for the move but his heel still connected with Seungmin’s shoulder. “I trusted you,” he howled.

 

“That was the point,” Seungmin yelled back. He swung his knife, aiming for Jisung’s shoulder. The serrated edge of it got snagged on the thick, wooly material but, fortunately, did not reach skin.

 

Jisung kicked at Seungmin’s shin with one foot and then spun and kicked the man’s kneecap with the other.

 

Seungmin let out a guttural yell and rushed backwards to give himself room.

 

“Fuck,” Jisung hissed. The kick hadn’t been hard enough to dislocate shit. “I thought we were friends.”

 

“You never treated me like one and for that, I’m sad.” He rushed forward and kneed Jisung in the gut so precisely that all of the wind was knocked from his lungs. “If you thought of me as a friend, perhaps that look of despair on your face would be so much sweeter. So much more torn up.”

 

“I’ll tear _you_ up.” Jisung pushed through the pain and swung upwards with his ice knife. If it weren’t for Seungmin’s protective vest, the move would have carved him from spleen to sternum.

 

Seungmin let loose a blind, wild punch. It connected with Jisung’s jaw and made tiny lights explode across his vision. “You better be fucking glad they want you alive or I’d skin you.”

 

Jisung was still recovering from the blow. He shook his head and tried to focus, get his wits back.

 

Seungmin saw the opening and went for it. Or tried to. Woojin leaped onto his back and managed to dig his teeth into Seungmin’s right ear before the traitor turned around and threw himself at the wall, shoving Woojin’s shoulder right through the plaster.

 

Woojin let him go immediately and sank to the floor with a wheeze.

 

“Woojin,” Jisung yelled. He rushed forward.

 

Seungmin barred his path, holding the gun in one hand and the knife in the other. “Just go back to the manor, Jisung, or you and your precious little boy toy will always be in danger. You’ll never get to fucking rest.”

 

“Shut up,” Jisung snapped. “Shut up!” He kicked upwards. “SHUT UP!” The side of his foot connected with the hand Seungmin held the gun in. The dangerous weapon flew out of Seungmin’s hand. Jisung did not let up. He swung his ice knife and watched in delight as a line of red opened up across Seungmin’s uniform sleeve. He spun away from the combat knife as Seungmin thrust forward with it and then elbowed Seungmin across the mouth. “How could you do this to me?”

 

“The paycheck,” Seungmin shouted at him.

 

It almost didn’t make sense. Seungmin’s apartment was bare bones. He barely bought food. Didn’t even replace burnt out lightbulbs. Could only be assed to pay his monthly internet bills and buy bags of… Jisung’s favorite candy. “Shit,” Jisung growled. Shit shit shit. 

 

In his distraction, Seungmin had got up close on Jisung. Grabbed him by the shirt collar and thrown him against the wall.

 

He landed on the floor in a disheveled heap. “Woojin,” Jisung wheezed out.

 

Woojin was so cold he was blue in the face.

 

“Get inside,” Jisung motioned to the open bedroom door. “Lock yourself in and don’t come out unless you fucking know it’s me.”

 

Woojin tried to respond but his teeth were chattering so hard that he could not speak. He could hardly move. Couldn’t even stand. Jisung crawled towards him, grabbed him by his hair and threw him towards the door.

 

He wanted to do more than that but Seungmin had an arm around his waist. He hoisted Jisung up off of his feet and threw him to the floor.

 

Jisung practically bounced off the surface and was back on his feet in a breath. Jeongin had flung him to the mat harder than that. “I hate you, Seungmin,” he admitted. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you!” He lunged forward, practically flinging himself head-on at the traitor.

 

Seungmin easily stepped aside but that’s what Jisung wanted. Now that he was behind the guy, he dropped low and aimed a sweeping kick at Seungmin’s left ankle, knocking the dude’s foot out from under him completely. Seungmin let out an undignified squawk before he fell flat on his back on the floor. 

 

Jisung used the moment of respite to shove Woojin the rest of the way into the bedroom and then slammed the door shut. Now that Woojin was out of the way and safe, now that there was no one else for Jisung to worry about, he could really dig deep.

 

The wind stopped.

 

The sudden silence in the apartment was eerie and dangerous.

 

It was growing colder and colder in the hallway by the second. The powdery snow across the floor was hardening like rock. Ice covered everything from the floor to the ceiling. Even the air itself was starting to crystalize.

 

Seungmin let out a war cry and lashed out with the knife in his hand but Jisung somersaulted backwards just in time to avoid having his foot sawed off.

 

“I hate you I hate you I hate you I HATE YOU,” Jisung chanted. The more he said it, the truer it was. More and more pieces of Seungmin’s deception were falling into place. Every part of his behavior had been falsified. Put into place to keep Jisung in check. Even Seungmin’s agonizingly slow driving was part of his act. He had probably known since before they fucking met that Jisung got car sick. Jisung hated to think what other shit about his personal life that his parents had told Seungmin. The possibilities haunted him. “I hate you I hate you I hate you!” Jisung crawled forward like a fucking animal on all fours. 

 

All he needed was fucking skin contact.

 

Seungmin knew that, too. He rolled over onto his stomach and raised an arm to knock Jisung’s reaching hand away. “I had you like putty in my hands,” he said, crawling backwards across the hardened snow to give himself enough room to stand up. His breath left his mouth in foggy wisps. Frost collected in his hair. On his eyelashes. “You were so fucking predictable, Jisung. I knew exactly what buttons to push to rile you up. I had you like a fucking puppet on strings.”

 

“SHUT UP!” Jisung ran towards him. Jab, jab, jab, hook. The only thing that connected was the hook, clipping Seungmin across his ear. It was like boxing with Jeongin except now he could use his powers all he wanted to without being punished with broken fingers. He put his hands on Seungmin’s stomach and summoned wind. The blast of frigid air sent Seungmin sailing backwards.

 

The filthy little traitor somehow landed on his feet. “I can guarantee that if I had one more week with your ass, you’d be running home with your tail between your legs and you never would have thought I had anything to do with it.”

 

“I’m never going back,” howled Jisung. “No matter how many of you fuckers my parents send, I’m not going back. I’m not going back!” His own voice sounded alien to him. Like it belonged to someone else. Like it was coming from a place other than his own throat. “I will destroy everything before I ever go back to that hell.” All he did was twitch a finger but the movement still created a blade of ice in the air. He flung it forward.

 

Seungmin hurled himself against the wall to avoid it.

 

The projectile flew through the air, whistling high, and cleaved one of the dining room chairs clean in two.

 

“Fuck fuck fuck,” Seungmin groaned. The trained soldier fell away, revealing the twenty-something year old he was beneath the uniform. When he looked back up at Jisung, his eyes were desperate. He was about to do something absolutely foolish.

 

Both of their eyes landed on the gun lying in the middle of the hallway at the same time.

 

They both dove for it at the same time.

 

Seungmin reached it first but Jisung got a hand across Seungmin’s face and immediately went to work shoving his power out of his fingertips and across Seungmin’s cheeks, up his nose and into his mouth. Into his ears. Towards his eyes. In seconds, his face was covered in a thin layer of frost and, already, ice was following.

 

There was a loud boom, like thunder, from the front of the apartment.

 

Both of them looked up.

 

Half of the front door was still standing, thanks to the piling snow working as a bit of a makeshift barricade. The other half of the door lay in absolute splinters across the snow.

 

Chan stood in the doorway, not seeming to care that he was bleeding profusely from his hand.

 

“Great, just great,” Jisung moaned. He wouldn’t be able to handle a second enemy, but--

 

“Jisung! What the absolute fuck, dude? This guy wouldn’t let me get on the elevator and dragged me back. What’s going on in here?” It was Felix. He pushed Chan aside and leapt over the ruined door. His sneakers slid on the slick ice but he caught himself before he hit the floor. “Jisung? Is this what you meant about always having to fight?” Their eyes met. “Jisung!”

 

Oh no. Oh God no. “Stay away,” Jisung yelled at him.

 

“Holy fuck,” Felix cussed as he caught up with what the hell was happening in front of him. As he realized he had just become a brand new target. 

 

Seungmin punched Jisung square in the face, making the blue-haired boy let him go. Making the frozen tears hanging from his eyes shatter and fall to the floor. “You made me do this. Remember that.” Seungmin raised his gun and pointed the deadly object right at Felix.

 

“Chan,” Jisung yelled, because Chan was always there. Chan had always _been there_. “Protect him!” Because Felix didn’t fucking deserve to get involved in this shit. “Save him!”

 

But.

 

“I’m sorry, Master Han,” Chan said flatly. Emotionlessly. As if he wasn’t even aware of the life-or-death situation happening right in front of him. “I cannot follow your orders until I succeed in--”

 

“I’ll go home,” Jisung surrendered. “I’ll go back home! I swear.”

 

Seungmin aimed right at Felix’s heart. He pulled the trigger of his gun. _Bang!_

 

With inhuman speed, Chan leaped into the path of the bullet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @[Curious Cat](https://curiouscat.me/TheSwingbyJHF)


End file.
